


Heart Full of Gasoline

by sdwolfpup



Series: The Formula One verse [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (that's sarcasm), Alternate Universe - Formula One, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Ableism, Eventual Smut, F/M, Formula 1, Formula One, Found Family, Major Character Injury, Minor Character(s), No Twincest, Not a lot of angst, POV Multiple, Racing, Slow Burn, Smoking, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, antagonists to friends to lovers, but definitely some, canon typical injury, don't think i won't drive a good theme into the ground, i will add more speaking role characters when they show up, lots of car metaphors, really slow burn, see what i did there?, self-directed ableism, so many minor characters, sports underdog story, that's the level of subtlety you can expect here, they had a tag for that!, workplace misogyny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2020-12-27 10:17:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 51
Words: 406,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21117128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: Jaime Lannister is a Formula 1 driver with a sordid past, dubious future, and nothing left to lose as he hits the far edge of his career. He thinks all he wants is the world championship title he’s never quite been able to reach and to finally give up smoking. What he finds to his great surprise is what he really wants might be Brienne Tarth.Brienne Tarth is an unknown mechanic eager to make the jump to the big time of Formula 1. When Jaime hires her as Chief Mechanic for his team of misfits, she discovers she’s ready for the work, but is she ready for Jaime?





	1. Lannister Corp Racing: January (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the world's longest author note! Here's the actually important paragraph: Many thanks to the twitter folks who answered my F1 questions, of which I had many. Extra super-duper special thanks to BrynnMck for being excited about and helpful with every section I send her, for providing extremely thoughtful and just right advice when I need it, and for always being my favorite person to share a fandom with. <3 This fic LITERALLY would not have happened without her and her patience and her insight and her soothing of my worried mind; and even if I had managed to somehow do it without her, it would have been at least 75% worse. All remaining problems and errors are mine alone. Title and initial lyrics from The Local Strangers' “Gasoline,” which is a beautiful song I highly recommend you listen to while reading this or just in general. 
> 
> And here's the rest:
> 
> Formula One is a very European sport, but my Westeros is pretty Americanized (including the spelling of tire and using IAF instead of FIA). I could only exhaustively dive into one major thing and it ended up being every detail about F1 since that's more pertinent to the story and also Westeros isn't real. 
> 
> That being said, I have taken both some major and minor liberties with F1 to fit story needs including ignoring entire bits of traditional pre- and post- race activities (i.e., no national anthems) because they didn't feel right. But I tried to hew closely in spirit if not in every detail. If you're a stalwart F1 fan and are offended by something I changed or messed up: I'm sorry. You don't have to yell at me in comments you can just seethe quietly at me through the screen, I'll feel it.
> 
> Westeros in this story is equivalent technologically to 2019 real world, and I have cherry-picked many cultural references from our world while jettisoning entire swathes of our cultural car knowledge like Ferrari and McLaren and Mercedes and so on. Why did I do this? To make my life easier, you might say, but I say AUs are an alchemy of many choices through the entire writing process, made to balance the feel of the fandom world with our own while making it easy for the reader to fall into this carefully combined mix, and this one is no different. And also to make my life easier. 
> 
> I'm well into writing this and know exactly where it's going (FINALLY; it took me so long to settle on the ultimate path, as Brynn can attest) and will be posting once every two weeks as I write the rest and also edit (and re-edit, and re-re-edit) existing, non-published chapters. I have done the math of how much I have to write between every two week posting and it is doable. Once I get near enough to the end that I have a little room, I'll change to once a week posting but I don't want to back myself into an unattainable corner right from the get-go. 
> 
> The length of this author note should give you some idea of how long my chapters are going to be. I hope you enjoy the story!

_Got a heart filled with gasoline_  
_Burns so long but it don't burn clean_  
_Burns so hot that I don't know why_  
_You would stand here by and by_

* * *

From the outside, Selwyn's Garage looked like every other middle-of-the-road auto shop Jaime Lannister had ever seen. The biggest thing going for it was that it wasn't in a strip mall.

“Small mercies,” Jaime said to the gray exterior. His fingers slipped to his back pocket out of habit, searching for his cigarette case and finding only a pack of gum. “Crap,” he muttered, shoving it away again. He'd already been through four pieces on the trip over trying to distract himself; a fifth would just seem pathetic. 

The garage occupied a decent-sized building that looked like it used to be a warehouse. There was another warehouse next to it, some sort of office supply storage from the looks of it, with the utterly bland name of Supply Depot. Across the quiet street were more warehouses for varying goods and the road dead-ended in an empty gravel lot that was littered with cigarette butts and dog shit. 

Jaime squinted at Selwyn's again and wiped the rain from his face. He had it on good authority from Varys – who hadn't been wrong yet – that Stark Racing was sniffing around this exact garage looking for a new mechanic, the shop's namesake, a quietly well-regarded man from around the lower circuits, and Jaime would never let Robb Stark win any prize without fighting him to the bone for it. The question was, was there really a prize worth winning inside this dull building? Jaime's research had assured him Selwyn knew his stuff, but F1 was leagues away from even F2. 

Tugging his leather jacket up against the cold winter wind and rain of Tarth, Jaime strode inside, the bell on the door chiming brightly as he entered. The familiar smell of motor oil and rubber hit him, putting Jaime instantly at ease. He'd been swimming in these scents for most of his life, a sweet and acrid musk that settled his body and reminded him of a thousand other moments in garages all over the world. 

There was a TV in the decently sized waiting area, turned low to a sports channel, a row of air fresheners hanging in dozens of designs in a rack by the window, and a big counter with a worn but clean steel gray top directly in front of him. There was no one at the counter, but someone's rock music poured in from the open door leading back to the bay, the whiz-clank of power tools keeping a syncopated beat. 

“Hello!” he shouted, ignoring the shiny silver bell with a _Please ring for service!_ sign taped underneath it. “Selwyn Tarth?” 

The power tool stopped and the music shut off and Jaime called “Hello?” again in the silence. He heard a low, quick conversation and then one of the tallest men Jaime had ever seen came ducking under the doorjamb, wiping his hands on a clean rag. He was taller than Jaime by several inches, broad shouldered with a stomach that jutted out a bit from his jumpsuit, blue eyes, a silver beard, and a surprised look on his face.

“Jaime Lannister?” the man said, and if he didn't seem thrilled to see Jaime, at least there was not the mix of disgust and distrust Jaime was used to. 

Jaime's Lannister Corp Racing crew was a motley group that needed a spark to bring them all together or Jaime would never get below a three second pit, and without that he had no hope of winning the World Drivers' Champion title. The title had eluded him, always a half second behind, for too many years and his reflexes weren't getting any better the longer this went on. At thirty-five he wasn't ready for retirement, but racing was an endurance sport that took more to endure with every passing season. A faster pit, a smarter mechanic, these were things worth driving to sleepy warehouse districts for in the too-brief off season. He might not be able to get this mechanic based on reputation alone, but with the money of Lannister Corp at his back he could convince almost anyone of anything.

“Are you Selwyn?” Jaime asked. The man nodded and held out his hand. Jaime stared at it, and then back up at the man before shaking his hand. Jaime had stopped initiating even this most basic etiquette shortly after Aerys, when everyone started snubbing all his efforts to slide back in to the racers' inner sanctums. The number of people in racing circles who made the first move to him these days were vanishingly few and if there was life outside of racing circles, Jaime didn't have the time or inclination for it. 

Selwyn's hand was strong as expected, thick-fingered and confident. His handshake didn't pull any macho bullshit, either, just a few quick pumps and then he was done, simply giving Jaime a polite greeting and not some sort of sizing up. It was refreshing. 

“Tarth,” Jaime said, “like the island.”

The big man shrugged. “Old family ties. These days I don't own much more than this shop.”

“It's a nice-sized space you've got here.”

“We do all right for ourselves. You dropping something off?” he asked, his deep voice curious as he peered easily over Jaime's head to the parking lot. Jaime had come in a simple luxury sedan and Selwyn looked disappointed when he saw that and not some F1 beast lurking on the asphalt. 

“Here to pick something up, hopefully,” Jaime said. “Or someone, rather. I'm looking for a mechanic.” 

“You've come to the right place. What do you need?”

“I hear you have experience with Formula cars?”

“Mostly lower class ones, yes. Was an IAF Formula 2 mechanic for some years, did some Westeros and Dornish F3 pit work when I started out. I did F1 for half a season with Griffin but my wife died and I had to come home.” He pointed at a framed photo behind the counter and smiled proudly like he was pointing out a child. “I did build that beauty a couple years after, though.” 

It was clearly an F1-ready car, glinting blue and gold in the sunlight, the ocean stretching out in the distance behind the car like a postcard. “How's she run?” Jaime asked.

“As good as any test machines on the circuit, I'd wager. Though nowadays she's only used to teach engines, not test drives.” 

“Shame,” Jaime murmured. That car would have looked stunning coming around a hairpin turn. He shook his head a little and turned back to Selwyn, found the man watching him calmly. There was something steady about Selwyn Tarth, a core belief in his eyes that if everyone just took a breath then everything would be fine. Jaime felt himself relaxing. Selwyn would be an ace chief mechanic, could likely direct a quick and efficient pit crew and if he'd built his own F1 then he knew the intricacies of the regs. “How'd you like to come work for the Lannister Racing team?” Jaime asked, trusting his gut and jumping straight to the question.

Selwyn lifted a bushy eyebrow. “Doing what?”

“Being my number one mechanic. I need someone who can bring down my pit times and who knows the engine well enough to keep it tuned and getting better through the season.”

“You don't know anything about me, Mr. Lannister.” 

“I've got great instincts.” 

“Typical driver talk,” Selwyn drawled and Jaime grinned.

“So what do you say?”

“I'm afraid I say no, Mr. Lannister.” 

“That's only because I haven't told you how much I'm willing to pay.” 

Selwyn chuckled. “Money might open my ears a little more, but it won't change my mind. I had Stark's team in here last week poking around, offering money, too.” Jaime's smile slipped from sincere to falsely charming, hiding his disappointment. Varys had gotten the right information, it seemed, he'd just gotten it too late. 

“When do you start for them?” Jaime asked. 

“I'm not working for them, either. I don't want to live that life, Mr. Lannister. Too much travel, too much stress. I'd miss my shop.” Selwyn shrugged. “And I'll tell you the same thing I told the Starks: it's not me you want anyway.” 

“No?”

“I did good work back in the day, but now the real magic is-”

“The music fan,” Jaime jumped in.

“The same.” Selwyn smiled softly, almost sadly, and curiosity had Jaime peering around Selwyn's shoulder to see who was back there that had made him look like that. “The Stark contingent wasn't interested, though, said she didn't fit their culture.” 

“She?” Jaime asked, frowning. 

“My daughter, Mr. Lannister. She's a better mechanic than I ever was. She's basically grown up in this shop.” He nodded at the F1 picture. “She built that with me when she was as high as my waist, does most of the teaching on it now herself, adjusting it with the new regs every year. She's been fascinated by racing since she was a baby.” 

Jaime's heart beat excitedly. The Stark team and their sponsors had a very tightly controlled image they even required of the pit crew, but Jaime had no such constraints. In fact the more outlandish his crew, the better. His sponsors loved Bronn's relentless cursing, Podrick's wide-eyed, almost cherubic competence. A female chief mechanic could bring in more everything: more money, more publicity, more forgiveness from race judges that seemed, to a man, to despise him still. 

“I'd love to meet her,” Jaime said, keeping his voice cool and quietly interested. 

Selwyn looked back towards the door. “I know you're eavesdropping, girl, come on out,” he said lovingly, hardly needing to shout with the natural carry of his voice. 

There was nothing for a minute and then Jaime heard a tool being set down and Selwn's daughter walked into the front room. 

She was taller than Jaime too, though not as tall as her father. Her shoulders were broad like Selwyn's, her hands as big. She had sweaty, straw-colored hair that she'd too aggressively pressed down against her head, forming a shapeless bowl with the occasional strand poking out. There was a dark grease stain on one of her cheeks that made it look like there was a hole there, her thick lips were pressed together nervously, and her nose and freckled skin looked like she'd been in a losing fight with the road at least once and probably multiple times. She had all of Selwyn's staid features and none of his friendly charm and the combination was off-putting; except for her eyes, which were the color of Selwyn's F1, the part where the sun was hitting it and you could barely look straight into the blue it was so brilliant. 

Jaime was able to look long enough to see the familiar sheen of disgusted recognition, though, and he felt his jaw clench. What right did this beast of a woman have to judge him? 

“Brienne, this is Jaime Lannister.” 

“I know who he is,” she said, her tone as blunt as her big teeth. 

“Mr. Lannister, this is my daughter, Brienne,” Selwyn went on, ignoring her rudeness. “Best mechanic in all Westeros.” 

“Is that 'best' like the diner down the street that has the 'best coffee in King's Landing' sign they printed themselves?” he asked, driven to snark by her narrow-eyed stare. 

“You came to us,” she spit out. “You tell me.” 

He huffed, trapped by the truth of it. “Your father says you're a good mechanic.”

“The best,” Selwyn said again. “I'd stake my garage on it.”

Jaime lifted an eyebrow. For a man like Selwyn Tarth, that was a statement of belief that couldn't be overlooked. Brienne, for her part, was red as a stop light. 

“Hush,” she murmured to her father, though she gave him a small, pleased smile that Jaime was embarrassingly jealous of. The only time Jaime had ever smiled at his own father like that was when he was a toddler who didn't know any better what kind of man Tywin Lannister was. 

“This is all very sweet,” Jaime snipped, “but what's your actual Formula experience?”

“I've been an avid watcher my whole life. I helped build and currently maintain a functional F1 vehicle so I know all the technical requirements, and I've worked on a few F3 teams, including Renly Baratheon's back when he was in it. I know my way around every engine that's ever come into this garage. And I've even done some test driving.”

“You have? How did you fit in the cockpit?”

“How do you fit in your helmet?” she parried. 

Selwyn grunted and Jaime couldn't tell if it was disapproval or amusement. “So you want me to hire you as the number one mechanic for a professional F1 racing team because you're, what, a good fan and a decent mechanic?”

“Mr. Lannister-”

Selwyn held out his hand and they both stilled. “Mr. Lannister,” he said, and though his tone was not as sharp it felt crushingly heavy with disappointment. “You were willing to hire me for a goodly sum of money based purely on your instincts. What do your instincts tell you about my daughter?”

Jaime shoved his hand through his wet hair. He kept it short during the season so his helmet fit better but here in the off-season he'd let it grow out some and he tugged it now as he studied the absurdly tall woman before him, treating her like she was a car going through scrutineering. She straightened, not wilted, under his intense stare, which he grudgingly had to respect. Where Selwyn was ease and rounded shoulders, his daughter was as implacable and hard as stone, her big hands fused to her hips in a gesture of defiance. Her grey jumpsuit was mostly shapeless, the hint of small breasts, the suggestion of strong thighs underneath, nothing that would distract from her unfortunate face. At least Bronn wouldn't be distracted by her. _As long as he doesn't look into her eyes_, Jaime mused, looking into them now. His life was mostly red and gold and black, with green in flashes. There was nothing in his world that looked like the color of her blue eyes, and the uniqueness of it made him feel like he'd regained some sense memory he hadn't known he'd lost. 

“My instincts tell me she'll be a pain in my ass,” he finally said, shaking his head. “But you vouch for her?”

“I do,” Selwyn said immediately. “She knows her stuff, and she'll be a good leader. And we'll return any money you pay her if it doesn't work out.” Brienne stiffened at that but didn't disagree. 

“A money-back guarantee on a mechanic? How quaint.” He glanced at Brienne. “You know about me.”

“Yes.” 

“You don't like me.”

She hesitated. “I don't know you.”

Jaime snorted. “That hasn't stopped anybody else. You don't respect me, then. You think you know what happened on that track.”

“The committee cleared you,” she said, though she didn't sound entirely convinced of it. “You drive recklessly. You're rude to interviewers. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike you.”

That elicited a sharp, startled laugh from Jaime that echoed in the lobby. He couldn't remember the last time someone hated him for his personality and not what they thought he had done. It was as refreshing in its own way as Selwyn's handshake had been. “Fair enough. You think you could overlook all that? You're not going to sabotage my car if I hire you, are you?”

Her wide mouth gaped open, her brows knitting furiously. “How dare you even suggest that! I would never put a driver in danger; I'd sooner not take the job. If I work for you, I work for you, regardless of what I think of you personally.” 

For no reason at all, he believed her. He held out his hand. “Okay then.”

Brienne stared down at it, looked back up at him and those sparkling eyes were round with disbelief. “What, really?”

“Yes, really.” 

“How much will you pay?”

“Are you-” Jaime dropped his hand and glared at her. “You think anyone else is going to hire you to be a head mechanic on a pro team?”

Fire flared in her eyes. “I don't need a pity job, Mr. Lannister. I'm just fine working here or F3 for the rest of my life.”

“That's a lie. If you love racing as much as you say, you want this job. F1 is the only one that matters.” 

She chewed her lip, but lifted her chin and became a mountain. “I deserve to be paid what I'm worth, Mr. Lannister, especially if I'll be leading a Formula One team.” 

Jaime exhaled loudly and glared at Selwyn, who only looked proud and amused. The man was probably just thrilled to get rid of this stubborn lugnut of a daughter, Jaime thought darkly, doubting his instincts already. But if Selwyn was all Jaime believed him to be, then the daughter he supported so firmly was as safe a bet as Jaime could make these days. Being unable to find crew he could trust from inside racing's nepotistic network made chance-taking a requirement. Luckily for him, he loved a good risk.

“Fine,” Jaime said. “You tell me what a fair chief mechanic rate is and I'll take ten percent off for your lack of experience, with a bonus for each race we win. Deal?”

Brienne looked at her father, who nodded encouragingly. “Deal.” She held out her hand to shake and Jaime took it. It was similar to shaking Selwyn's, though less confident, like she wasn't sure how much strength to use, and where Jaime's thumb touched the back of her hand it was smooth, not hairy. He rubbed his finger along the skin, surprised by the patch of softness in a woman that seemed otherwise so rough. When he looked up at her, a nervous young woman's face had been carved out of the stone. 

“You'll work the full season,” he said, not letting her hand go yet, “starting next week.” She tugged gently at his hand but he only gripped hers tighter. As commander of over a thousand pounds of pure acceleration, his grip strength was hard to beat, and not even tall, strong Brienne Tarth could easily break his hold. 

“I have to make sure my father-”

“I'll be fine,” Selwyn cut in. “I'll help her get her things together. You'll be paying for her move, of course.” 

Jaime glanced at Selwyn and let go of Brienne's hand. “Of course,” he said dryly. “And you'll sign an NDA saying you won't take any of what you've learned and use it to make a profit for two years after you're done with Lannister Racing. That includes working with a competitor's team in that time.” 

“Is that really necessary?” Brienne asked.

“My lawyers won't let me hire anyone without it.”

“I thought it was your team,” Brienne said smugly. 

“I thought you were ready to be a professional,” he snarked back. 

“We'll have our lawyer look it over and sign it,” Selwyn said, stepping in again. Jaime wondered how they were going to make an entire season of this without the man to mediate for them. 

“Good.” Jaime looked around the shop. This had all passed more quickly than he'd expected and it felt wrong to just leave now, blowing in and out like this was just a pit stop. Besides, he needed a better measure of his new mechanic's abilities if he didn't want to put up with Tyrion's dead-eyed stare or Bronn's obnoxious commentary for the next week. “Any chance I can get a look at the car?” he asked Brienne. 

She glanced at Selwyn and he shrugged. “Sure. This way,” she said, turning abruptly and leading him behind the counter into the big garage bay. There was an old sedan up on a lift at the far end and a truck with its hood popped in the middle, the latter of which Selwyn returned to. The roll-up doors were pulled down most of the way against the chill, but a cool wind still snuck in through the small gap, stirring a cloth fallen onto the floor. Their footsteps echoed in the quiet as Brienne led him to a door at the far wall. With practiced movements she opened it and switched on the light, then stepped to the side. “In there,” she said, shoving her hands in the deep pockets of her jumpsuit. 

Jaime had to brush past her to enter the room and discovered as he did that she smelled of motor oil and sweat and soap. Inside the room was another section of warehouse big enough for two cars but only a single machine sat in the middle, gleaming under the lights, pulling all attention its way. He approached the car slowly, tilting his head this way and that to take all of it in, crouching down by the front right tire and reverently reaching out to smooth his hand over the front wing. The tires were last years soft compound, made for speed. Jaime leaned forward and peered down the length of the car, past the driver's cockpit to the looming hump of the engine intake, then he walked alongside the car, letting his fingers walk the path his eyes had taken. “Beautiful,” he murmured before straightening by the rear wing. 

“Can I see the engine?” Jaime asked, looking up to find Brienne's cheeks were flushed patchy red. 

She nodded silently and hurried over, opening it up for him. Jaime knew engines well enough to know this one was well-cared for and well within specifications for racing, and it would keen like a woman on the edge as it took off from the starting line. 

“I'd love to take this for a spin someday,” Jaime said, glancing at his new mechanic. 

“There's a track in town.”

“Evenfall, I know it. Near the the hill with that old castle that belonged to ancestors of yours, I believe.” 

Brienne shrugged. “Dad says it's ancient history, but we do get free weekday runs because of it.” She stared down hard at the car, and her hair slipped free of its firm bowl, falling past her ear. “You raced there back when you were driving F2. It was the first time we'd had one on that track.”

“I remember. Were you there?”

She nodded. “You won.” 

“I won a lot of F2 races.” He smirked at her. “And now we're going to win a lot of F1s, right?”

“Mr. Lannister-”

“Jaime,” he said. “You're not going to need to be so formal on the asphalt.” 

She pressed her lips together. “I haven't signed anything yet.” 

“You will.” Brienne's eyes darted to him, bright and blue and suspicious. He frowned. “Don't look at me like that, it's not a threat. This car has been upgraded to last year's regulations and judging by what's on that bench over there,” he nodded at a crowded but still organized-looking bench that went the length of the wall, “you're ready for this year. You'd be the first woman as a chief mechanic in F1 ever, inspiring a whole generation of girls. You're not going to let this dream go, even though you have to deal with me. That's all I'm saying.” 

“I should get back to work,” Brienne said, turning her distracting eyes back to the car. “Thank you for considering me, Mr. Lannister.” 

“Jaime,” he reminded her. “And don't thank me yet. You haven't met the rest of the team.”

* * *

That night, back home in his roomy penthouse in King's Landing, smoking a cigarette he knew he shouldn't have, Jaime stared at the contract Tyrion had sent over for him to read and approve before they took it to Brienne. His father would make the final signature on behalf of Lannister Corp Racing, but Jaime had asked Tyrion to let him get a review before everything was finalized. It was nearing midnight and the letters were jumping around the page more than usual as Jaime's eyes started to water. He gave up trying to make sense of the legalese and signed off on it, then shoved the papers aside.

What in the seven hells had he done? 

He'd plucked an inexperienced mechanic out of some island in the Stormlands and given her - _her_ \- the responsibility for making sure the extremely fast death machine he raced wouldn't fail him, that's what he'd done. Jaime threw back the rest of the whiskey he'd been trying to savor and sighed. He hadn't even been drunk or high when he'd done it, which is how he made most of his worst decisions. 

“Fuck,” he said out loud and then repeated it when he noticed his phone ringing and saw who it was. 

“Late for you, isn't it?” Jaime said by way of greeting. 

“I heard you took a trip today.”

“Varys is a good lapdog.”

Jaime could almost hear Tywin's sneer. “What inane thing are you doing with my money now?”

“It's not your money, it's Lannister Corp's money, you just oversee it.” 

“Jaime-”

“I secured the last piece of the puzzle that's going to let us win.” 

“What is it this time? A hair coach?”

Jaime glared at his empty whiskey glass and stalked over to the cabinet to refill it. “Look at you, father, making jokes so far past your bedtime.”

“You're very rude for someone who relies on me for his job.” 

“You're very arrogant for someone who would have to rely on Lancel if I left.” Jaime took Tywin's bitter silence as a win. “You'll be getting a contract to sign and then you can see what I've done next week.”

“So you do remember preseason work starts next week.” 

“Amazing, isn't it? Almost like I'm a professional.” 

Tywin sighed. “Go to sleep, Jaime. I'm not the only one getting older.” He hung up and Jaime considered throwing his phone at the wall, but he'd broken his last phone that way just a couple of months ago and didn't want to give Tywin the satisfaction of making him buy another one so soon. 

Jaime stubbed out his cigarette and downed another glass of whiskey before readying for bed. Tywin needed Jaime for this season, but it was feeling more and more like his patience with his eldest son had dried up. There were promising drivers in F2 and Lannister Corp had enough money they might be able to lure away one of the established F1 drivers instead, especially if Jaime were no longer on the team, hanging like a cursed millstone around everyone's necks. 

He was more than aware of the terrible things people whispered about him at media events, the things angry competitors shouted barely audible over the whine of the engines when Jaime cut too close or nudged too hard. _Fuck them and fuck father, too_, Jaime thought. He would show them all, as long as Brienne Tarth was everything he hoped she would be. 

It was that thought that kept Jaime tossing and turning until nearly dawn.

* * *

When Brienne returned to the garage after Jaime left, her father didn't say anything, he just turned her music back up and they worked peacefully through the afternoon with the weight of Jaime's offer hanging over them. A few more customers came by, one with a a flat tire that needed a quick patching, their elderly neighbor in for his every three months oil change, a young woman bringing the used car she wanted to buy in to be checked out. Brienne took that one eagerly, walking her through everything she was doing while the girl, barely even in her 20s as far as Brienne could tell, watched with interest.

“You're good at that,” her father said once the woman had left looking pleased. 

Brienne shrugged. “It's just a car check, Dad.”

“I mean the teaching part.” He looked down at his hands as he wiped them on one of the pile of rags they had stowed about the shop. “Could reach a lot more people with the F1 job.”

“I'd be too busy for any of that. Anyway I've been thinking about it and...it's not right for me.”

“Why not?” Selwyn set the rag down and studied her with eyes that had not gone soft with age. 

She tapped one finger on the workbench, adjusted one of the screwdrivers so it hung straight. “I'm busy here.”

Her father snorted. “I'll pass on that lie.”

“There's never been a woman as chief mechanic, why would they start with me?”

“Why not?” He took her hand in hers. “You're easily as talented as any man. You've got Formula experience. And they have to start breaking down those glass walls sometime.”

Brienne sighed and looked down at their hands, the way they looked so much alike in strength and size, though his were showing signs of age. “I have F3 experience, but none in F1. Lannister wanted you, anyway, not me. You forced him to ask me.”

Selwyn stiffened and looked offended. “I did no such thing, young lady. He asked to meet you, which I know you heard.”

“What was all that stuff about the best mechanic in Westeros, though?”

“It was the truth. You've a gift with vehicles, Brienne, especially race cars. You know how they work, how they run happiest. You love it, I see it in your face every time we go to the track to drive or even just to watch. I don't know why you never went back to F2 after those first months,” and he paused as though this would suddenly be the day she would tell him about the worst two months of her life, before he continued, “but F1 is your dream and you have to go for it. If you hate it, you come back home knowing at least you tried. There's always a place for you in the shop, any time, you know that.”

Brienne squeezed his hand and let it go, hugging herself against the evening chill creeping in under the roll-up doors. “I can't trust Jaime Lannister.” 

“You don't have to, you only have to trust his car and the other mechanics. Besides he may have searched us out but it's Twyin Lannister that will make the deal. You just keep your head down and focused on the vehicle, give Lannister as wide a berth as you need to, and you'll be fine.” He headed for the front to lock it. “The decision is yours, daughter, you just need to make it.”

They cleaned and closed up the shop while Brienne mulled all of it over. She loved cars, the way they sounded and smelled, how she could understand and connect to them better than she could most people, and race cars were her passion. Her brief experience in F2 may have ended in frustration and embarrassment, but it hadn't changed her heart. But what her heart wanted now would put her back into a circle she had fled from with her pride barely intact, and she'd do have to do it with a man known more for his tragic failures than his grand successes. For the thousandth time she wondered if the commission had got it right, if Jaime Lannister could possibly have caused a fatal racing accident on purpose. What would it mean to work with a man who might have that in him? Would having her dream within reach be worth twining her reputation even lightly to his? 

She stared up at her dark ceiling for hours that night, wrestling with hard questions and impossible answers, tempted onward by the shining light of what she wanted so near.

* * *

Brienne spent the rest of her week in a harried daze. There was packing to do, and shopping for clothes more appropriate for the warmer winter of King's Landing, not to mention making sure she finished up any urgent work at the garage so she didn't leave her dad in the lurch. He put out a call to her uncle Endrew to fill in for the next few weeks until her father could find a replacement for her, but Brienne still felt guilty for leaving. The life of a Formula 1 team was nonstop from winter testing through the last race at the end of November, and she wouldn't see her dad or her beloved island at all until the August break. She remembered how difficult the half year seasons with Formula 3 had been, and they'd had a race here midway through. This would be many more months on the road working much longer hours with the most notorious man in racing. Every second she wasn't preparing to leave, she was desperate to stay.

When the papers had shown up, hand-delivered by a bored courier, Brienne had read them over the shoulder of their lawyer and family friend, Goodwin, regretting ever agreeing to this. Months and months of having to put up with a smartass that she'd barely lasted five minutes with before she'd wanted to smack him. Months and months of having to watch his annoyingly handsome face as he hungered over cars the way other men did women. Not women like her, of course, but she'd seen it happen to others. She tried instead to think of the girls he'd said she would inspire, of the dream that had always been just out of reach for so long. 

“What do you think?” she'd asked Goodwin, hoping there would be some reason besides fear to not sign. 

“Looks solid. Lays out the terms clearly, the sum is what you'd agreed to, end of contract is end of the racing season or earlier if both parties – you and Lannister Corp – agree, at which point you give up the money they've paid you.” Goodwin glanced at her. “You're sure you're okay with that clause?”

“It's part of why he hired me.”

“It does say if they fire you without your agreement, you keep the money you've earned and what you would have earned for the rest of that month.”

A small gesture, but Brienne appreciated it. Goodwin finished reading and then handed her the pen. “In my professional opinion, it's a solid deal.”

“And your personal opinion?” Selwyn asked from where he was chopping vegetables in the cozy kitchen. 

Goodwin shrugged. “Jaime Lannister is a damn good driver, but you know his record as well as I do. The man drives reckless and attracts trouble.” 

Brienne sat down in an empty chair and sighed. She'd had this conversation with herself every hour since he'd left their shop and her father had put the decision in her hands, and she'd come to the same conclusion every time: the opportunity, even as disagreeable as Jaime Lannister was, outweighed the risk. “I can't pass this up. It's the only way I'll ever get this experience.”

“Just make sure you don't pay too much for it.” Goodwin shoved the papers her way and Brienne exhaled shakily as she signed. “And the deed is done,” Goodwin said.

His tone was light, but Brienne's hand didn't stop trembling until much later that night.

* * *

“You're sure you won't come with me?” Brienne asked her dad one last time in the waiting room of the ferry terminal.

Selwyn smiled warmly at her, cupped her cheeks with his big hands. “I'd just slow you down. You're going to be amazing, but you're going to need every ounce of focus to do it.” 

Brienne nodded and let him tug her into his strong arms. She would miss the way it felt like he was protecting her whenever he hugged her, his arms the only place she'd ever truly felt safe. She pressed her face down into his shoulder. “What if-”

“No more what ifs, girl.” His deep voice was a low rumble, connecting his heart to hers. “Don't be afraid – of hard work, or failing, or even Jaime Lannister. You can conquer all of it.” She exhaled shakily and he kissed the side of her head. “First you have to not miss your ferry, though.” 

She smiled into the soft flannel of his shirt and then pulled out of his arms. “I love you, Dad.” 

“I love you, too. Call me when you get into your apartment. And send me pictures! Send me all the pictures you want.” He gestured with his new phone. “I'll show everybody here.”

Brienne waved to him as she hefted one giant duffle bag and rolled another huge piece of luggage behind her, and she waved to him from the outside deck of the ferry, and she kept waving as Tarth disappeared behind them, heading for her new home.


	2. January (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That was my only first place finish that season,” he said from behind her, and Brienne whirled, startled. He'd come in through a side door she'd ignored, and he was leaning casually in the doorway, arms and feet crossed, watching her intently. His golden hair fell slightly over eyes that still held the same bitterness, but lacked even the minor softening of the triumph now. Jaime had been a bit bedraggled back on Tarth, handsome enough but muted somehow by the rain and her shock. Here on his own turf, dressed in comfortable jeans and a black t-shirt with Lannister Racing scrawled on the front in blood-red, the full impact of him was briefly overwhelming. She'd read countless messages on social media and fan boards of women – and men – all too eager to throw themselves at the feet of the so-called Kingslayer. But that was when he was villainously charming; what would they think now that he simply looked villainous?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I unexpectedly finished the chapter I was working on a week early, so have an update a week early! This is the longest chapter of the fic so far, and will probably be the longest of the whole story, just to set expectations. They'll mostly be about half this long and two weeks apart. :)

The ferry deposited her at Storm's End, where Lannister Corp had sent a towncar to drive her the rest of the way to King's Landing as part of the promised move. It was a couple hour's journey but the driver just nodded his head in greeting and let her rest, so she dozed, waking occasionally to look out the window and wonder what she'd gotten herself into. Someone from the company had also selected the apartment for her, which had been both worry and relief. When the towncar pulled up to the curb in front she realized the worry had been unfounded. She was in a nice enough area with streetlights and minimal litter and it was within walking distance of a little grocery and drug store and a few cozy-looking restaurants. The apartment itself was fine; there was a main room and a bathroom and, unexpectedly, a separated bedroom, plus a kitchen big enough for her. It wouldn't fit anyone else when she was in it, but she didn't anticipate she'd be having anyone over. She knew no one in King's Landing and she'd be far too busy to have out-of-town guests, as few as there might be. The apartment would fit her for the year ahead. 

It was furnished with a cheap couch, a full-size bed, and a dining room table with two chairs. There were paper plates and plastic utensils in the kitchen, plus major appliances and some basic needs like paper towels and toilet paper. Everything else she was going to have to provide. All in all she had to admit it was a fair deal. 

On the table was a laptop with a yellow sticky note attached to it that read '_Call me. - JL_' and his phone number and nothing else. Brienne frowned down at the abrupt message. Call me. Like she would jump whenever he snapped his fingers. Technically, he wasn't even her boss, Tywin Lannister was. As the one signing her check it was Jaime's father she ultimately had to impress, no matter what the contract said. But it couldn't hurt to try to start out on the right foot with Jaime. 

After setting her things down, texting her dad a quick note to let him know she'd arrived, and using the bathroom, Brienne put the number in her cell phone under Jaime's name and called him. 

“Yes?” he said after two rings, terse and annoyed. 

“Mr. Lannister?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

Brienne glared at the note on the laptop. “It's Brienne Tarth. You demanded I call you.” 

“I demanded-” he snorted into the phone and she grimaced at the burst of noise. “You mean I left you a note asking you to call.” 

“Asking suggests there would be a 'please' or even a 'will you' in the sentence, not just 'call me.'”

“I'm sorry I wasn't sensitive enough for your delicate feelings. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to ask you to _please_ change my tires when I'm in the middle of a race.” 

If Brienne's annoyance was a laser she would have burned a hole through the sticky note, her laptop, the table, and all the way down through the apartment building with it. “Mr. Lannister-”

“Jaime,” he said, and then in a mocking voice, “please.”

“You asked that I call,” she ground out. “What do you want?”

“I want you to know where to show up for work tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow?” 

“Is there a problem? Big plans already?”

Her whole body was tight, clenched around the phone. “No. Tomorrow is Sunday, I assumed I would have a day to get some food and other things for my apartment, get settled.”

“The rest of the crew started today. You're already late.” 

“You said I could arrive today.”

“You could. You would just be late.” Brienne exhaled heavily into the phone and tried very hard not to cry. It was only one day into living her dream, she would not let him ruin it so soon. “First day is just getting to know you bullshit, though,” he went on, “I didn't go, either.” There was a feminine giggle in the background that was definitely not him. “But I'll be there tomorrow, nine am, and so should you. You're calling from your cell phone?”

“Yes,” she managed, somehow even closer to crying now that he'd so carelessly brushed away the worry that he'd caused with his first pronouncement. 

“I'll text you the address and the password to get into that laptop. It has this year's regs – I know you've read them, but read them again – plus information specifically about the Lannister cars. I want you sharp and ready for tomorrow.” There was a muffled noise and then Jaime's voice low and seductive and not for her, “I'll get to you in a minute,” followed by another background giggle. “You will be ready, won't you?” he asked in the phone again, and all of the seduction was gone. 

“I will.” 

“Good. Don't make me regret this, Tarth. I'm counting on you.” His voice went husky again on that, but not seductive; instead there was something deep and needy behind it, a desperation he could not entirely keep at bay. “See you in the morning. Nine am.” And then he hung up. 

Brienne tossed her phone on the table and winced when it bounced. She should be more careful; she couldn't afford a new one yet and she suspected she was going to want to throw her phone a lot in the coming months. The screen lit up with a new text message with the address of the garage, the password to her laptop, and NINE AM in all capital letters. Briefly she considered throwing the phone again, but instead found some bread in a cabinet and cheese in the fridge and sat down with her meager meal, the laptop shining brightly long into the evening as she studied for tomorrow.

* * *

The alarm wailed loudly at way-too-early o'clock and Brienne desperately groped around and snoozed it while she tried to remember where she was. She had her own pillow but the sheets felt and smelled different and the mattress was decidedly not hers. When she rubbed her eyes and pried them open, she looked around the small room of her new apartment and remembered the devil's bargain she'd made.

“For the girls,” she mumbled to herself. 

Her eyes were gritty and dry from reading until past midnight, and she peered through the smallest slits she could as she navigated the unfamiliar space to her bathroom to splash water on her face. Her hair was a mess and one cheek was bright red and creased, the other pale. Brienne sighed and got ready, still not entirely sure yet the best way to get to the garage. At least she'd left herself some bread and cheese to gnaw on over breakfast. 

At seven thirty, bus route in hand, Brienne headed downstairs and saw the towncar from last night parked at the curb. Unsure, she hesitated and a tall, scarred man extricated himself from the driver's side. It was not the man who had picked her up yesterday. 

“You the mechanic? Brienne Tarth?” he barked, his voice loud in the early morning quiet. 

“Yes?” 

“Lannister sent me to pick you up.”

“Why didn't he tell me that?”

“The fuck should I know? Ask him.” 

Brienne eyed the man as she pulled out her phone, tried to keep him in her peripheral vision while she texted Jaime. 

'Did you send someone to drive me to the garage?'

He responded quickly. 'Yes. Clegane, but we all call him the Hound. Thought you two would hit it off, you have a lot in common.'

Brienne glanced at the tall, ugly man and she flushed all over. She typed 'fuck you' but didn't send it, turning her phone off instead. “What's your name?” she asked the man, still reluctant to get into a car with him. She'd had self-defense classes, worked out regularly and prided herself on her own strength, but this man would be dangerous even to her. 

“Sandor Clegane, but no one calls me that. Are you coming or what?”

“I can see why you're in the service business,” Brienne muttered, deciding to trust him. Instead of coming around to open her door Sandor just got back in the car and she shook her head and let herself in the back. 

“I don't chat,” he said, starting the car and pulling out into the road without even seeing if she'd buckled. 

That was fine with her, so she stared out the window, getting a better view of King's Landing in the morning light. It wasn't a bad place, at least here. Crowded with apartment buildings, delis, little shops. It reminded her of downtown Tarth, if downtown Tarth had built on top of itself for another fifty years. There were a few people out walking their dogs or jogging, but it seemed most had decided weekend mornings were for sleeping, like normal people. Sandor didn't turn on any music and, as promised, didn't talk, he just stared straight ahead, two big hands on the wheel, and wound his way expertly through the streets. 

When he parked in front of a two-story office building half an hour later, Brienne frowned at him. 

“Are we picking up someone else?”

He looked at her in the rearview mirror, his eyes indicating how much of an idiot he thought she was. “This is your destination.”

They were in a completely plain business park and though the words Lannister Corp Racing stood tall and deep red along the side of the building, she still didn't quite believe him. 

“I'm supposed to go to the official garage, not the administrative offices.”

“You think they didn't tell me where to drop you?”

“No,” she said slowly, “but-”

“Lady, just get in the fucking building,” Sandor sighed. 

“Will you be driving me home?” 

“If I'm lucky,” he said, all sarcasm, and Brienne wondered if it were a job requirement for working with the Lannisters. 

“Do I call you, then?”

“Nah, I'll be here when it's time.” 

Brienne got out of the car, her purse, laptop, and balled up coveralls clutched tightly under her arm, and Sandor drove away as soon as she'd shut her door again, leaving her alone in the mostly empty parking lot. There was a single flashy sports car parked in the spot designated 'CEO' and nothing other than the birds with her. 

The outside of the building was mirrored glass that Brienne purposefully did not look into as she aimed for the front door. She tugged it open and stepped into a spacious, sparkling clean lobby. It reminded her of a car dealership more than anything; there was a long, curved wooden desk in front, currently empty, and plush leather chairs for visitors. On each side were towering trophy cases filled with awards over the years and behind the desk the wall was tastefully crowded with photos of cars, drivers, and momentous moments in Lannister racing history. With the drive she was an hour early, so she spent some time examining each photo, which they'd arranged chronologically from left to right. She watched Jaime Lannister grow from a bright-eyed, excited youth in junior karting to the cynical, world-class driver he was today in the span of a few minutes. The shift was most noticeable around the second third of the wall, when he'd returned to F1 after the Aerys incident. 

She remembered being a young teenager and reading the headlines in horror when it had happened, though none of those headlines were given space here. 'Kingslayer,' they'd called Jaime, for having killed his own teammate Aerys Targaryen at the height of Aerys' reign over F1. Aerys had flipped his car, ten times end over end, in a spot which at the time had had no cameras. There'd been spectators of course, and their opinions had been split down the middle: half thought Jaime had rammed Aerys on purpose, half said it was entirely an accident. The Formula 1 commission had been unable to come to an agreement either way beyond recklessness, so Jaime had been penalized the full twelve points, keeping him out of the last race of the season and ensuring he would not win the world championship that year. Then, as though that wasn't punishment enough, they'd dismissed him back to F3 at the end of the season, claiming he was still too young and hadn't had enough track experience to compete safely at such a high level. 

Aerys had died on the track, a spot still memorialized by fans with flowers every year during the race. Brienne had cried at the news, at the tragedy of such a talent dying so pointlessly, of two men having the best racing seasons of their lives ruined in a single moment. Though she was as uncertain as everyone else about what had happened, she trusted the racing commission and their judgement, but Jaime's behavior since then had done nothing to endear him to anyone. He could have been grateful to have survived; he could have applied himself with humility and an eagerness to learn; he could have even admitted he'd made a mistake and apologized. He did none of those things, and every year the whispers got louder. 

Brienne studied the picture of Jaime at his first race after they'd finally let him back in F1, when he'd joined the F1 Lannister Racing team for the first time. He'd won, but there was no joy in his celebratory picture; it was all bitter triumph, his eyes a dare to the world to try to take it from him. 

“That was my only first place finish that season,” he said from behind her, and Brienne whirled, startled. He'd come in through a side door she'd ignored, and he was leaning casually in the doorway, arms and feet crossed, watching her intently. His golden hair fell slightly over eyes that still held the same bitterness, but lacked even the minor softening of the triumph now. Jaime had been a bit bedraggled back on Tarth, handsome enough but muted somehow by the rain and her shock. Here on his own turf, dressed in comfortable jeans and a black t-shirt with Lannister Racing scrawled on the front in blood-red, the full impact of him was briefly overwhelming. She'd read countless messages on social media and fan boards of women – and men – all too eager to throw themselves at the feet of the so-called Kingslayer. But that was when he was villainously charming; what would they think now that he simply looked villainous?

“You had bad luck that season,” she said, trying to connect. 

“Mm,” he said, gracefully pushing off from the doorway with one broad shoulder. He stood next to her, his glance taking in the photos. “Yes, bad luck keeping a team who was bitter about Aerys.”

Her brow furrowed as she watched him examining himself. “Your crew sabotaged you?”

“I don't have proof but I know they did.” She must not have hidden her disbelief because his jaw tightened when he glanced at her. “I replaced all of them,” he said grimly, “except Bronn and Podrick. Bronn's too greedy to betray me and Podrick's too naïve. The season after that was chalked up to bad luck, too. All three engines wrecked before the halfway point of the season? Astonishing. I let them go, too. Again, except Bronn and Pod. Luckily for them I've lost since then because the only people we can rely on are also mostly shit and the officials have made actual rules because of my blocking and passing techniques. There's a reason I had to go all the way to Tarth to find a chief mechanic.” 

“Mr. Lannister-”

“Jaime,” he said, turning on his heel, lifting his chin to meet her eyes. “Gods you're taller than I remembered.”

She flushed. “I know you're taking a chance on me. I won't betray that trust.”

His eyes flickered brightly, but brief, like something inside him had been lit afire and then quickly smothered. He did have lovely eyes, green and gold, but they were too hard and sad to meet for long. “I know you won't,” he said quietly. Then he shook himself a bit, and smiled sharply. “Besides, I have a money-back guarantee. Come on,” he headed back to the door. “Let me show you around. I suspect you've never seen a garage like this before.”

* * *

An hour later she knew he was right. Walking through the door from the lobby into the spaces hidden behind the walls and opaque windows was like stepping into Oz. Brienne tried to contain herself on the tour, but she failed five minutes in when her mouth dropped open at seeing the engineering room filled with computers and 3D printers and whiteboards that were half full. The space was huge and still packed with stuff, including multiple engines they used for testing and a wall just of giant computer screens.

“Racing isn't just a machine and a mechanic and a driver anymore,” Jaime said dryly as they entered the race day room that looked more like mission control than something as terrestrial as car racing. 

“It wasn't even in F3. We did our work in a much smaller space but there were still more computers than wrenches. I knew F1 would be different, but...”

“But you didn't _know_.”

She glanced at him, but he didn't seem annoyed. “I had no idea.”

“Wait until you see the wind tunnel.” 

Jaime took her through the rest of the spaces, showing her the wind tunnel as well as the body work area and rows of cubicles where people, including herself, would stay long into the night figuring out how to get him one tenth of a second faster. 

“There's a whole other building behind us but it's mostly for marketing, travel, other administrative stuff. This spot is yours,” he said, pointing to a cube in the corner. There was a desk wth just a monitor and a few cords. “My office is right across from you. You can just plug your laptop in and you'll be up and running. Guard that laptop with your life. It's got all our info on it.” 

She clutched it tighter to her chest as Jaime walked her through the spaces rattling off names she'd have to relearn later and talking about the intricacies of what they all did with a confident matter-of-factness she respected in spite of herself. He wasn't interested in just jumping behind the wheel and leaving everything else behind, as other drivers she'd known had been; he was involved in every aspect of what went into race day. Brienne vowed to learn as much as she could, too. She would keep up with Jaime Lannister if she had to spend the next year on three hours of sleep a night to do it. 

Eventually he paused at a big steel door with a high-tech lock and grinned at her. “I'll get you added to the system so you can access this room. Right now only Lancel, his race engineer and chief mechanic, and I can unlock this door.” 

“Not your father?”

He smirked. “Twyin Lannister doesn't care to get his hands dirty with the details. He just likes to show up for pictures.” Jaime tapped in a code and pressed his finger to the pad. The lock blinked green and there was an audible click before Jaime turned the handle and opened the door, ushering her in ahead of him. 

The room was dark until Brienne stepped inside and lights turned on, first right above her then flickering on into the distance, ten sets of them in a space as big as a small plane hangar. If stepping into the engineering area had been stepping into Oz, then this was ascending to the seven heavens themselves. Brienne halted a few steps in, her eyes hot with tears that she furiously blinked back. She would not cry in front of Jaime, no matter how overwhelmed she was to be here. 

There were neat stacks of fat tires, benches filled with polished tools, several partial engines on blocks, spare body parts, and more, everything all perfectly organized and labeled. A gleaming black stand with computer screens on four sides stood in the middle looking like something out of a science fiction movie with its various cords and keyboards. And on either side of that island were two cars sparkling under the lights. She recognized the red and gold Lannister colors from hundreds of races. They hadn't made any significant changes to their livery in a decade, but they didn't need to; their colors were so ingrained in every fan's mind with power and wealth and winning it would be idiotic to lose that recognition. 

“Lancel's is the one on the left,” Jaime said and she nodded. 

“31. His apartment number growing up.” Jaime made a surprised sound. “I told you I was a fan, Mr. Lannister.” 

“And my number?”

“You're number 8, chosen to honor Arthur Dayne, the greatest racer of all time.”

“Greatest for now.” 

Brienne shifted nervously under his intent stare, looked instead at his car. Dayne's number had gone unused after his retirement, even after the standard two-year embargo, as though everyone had been waiting for Jaime to claim it when he hit F1 the first time. Brienne had seen enough interviews with Jaime to know how much he'd respected Dayne and she'd often wondered how many people they'd had to bribe to keep the number free then and again after he'd been kicked back down to the lower circuits. She wondered how many people now hated seeing Jaime in a car bearing Dayne's number and memory. 

Brienne walked slowly over to Jaime's car, hesitating before touching it. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “May I?” she asked, and he nodded. 

“You'll be in charge of her,” he said seriously as Brienne brushed her hand over the long edge of the front wing, as she moved to peer inside the cockpit and examine the steering wheel littered with buttons, as she pressed both hands flat to the intake and breathed it in. “You'll be responsible for taking her apart and then building her before each race. You need to know every part.” 

“I look forward to it,” Brienne whispered. Jaime appeared next to her and when she looked over he was smiling softly down at the car. He met her gaze and for a fleeting moment Brienne thought that smile was for her, too, and she felt warm all over, until he looked away again. 

“Take a look around and get to know where everything is. Once the others get here,” he checked his watch, “in ten minutes, we'll do introductions and jump right in. We've got car launch in less than a month but tire choices were released for the first tracks this morning so we'll be focusing on that today to ease in. It'll still take all day, though; Bronn likes to argue for no good reason except hearing the sound of his own voice.” 

“Can't you tell him to be quiet?”

Jaime laughed, a genuine booming sound that filled the echoing space and made it seem warmer. “Get to work, Tarth. There'll be a pop quiz later.” 

He was still chuckling as the door closed behind him.

* * *

Jaime waited for the others in his office, reviewing the tire choices and current car specs and trying to forget the look on Brienne's face when she'd seen his car. He'd never seen anyone love his car as much as he did, and it had for a too-long second unmoored him to share that feeling with another human being. The crew was solid and dedicated and he trusted, now, that they worked their hardest on his behalf, all wanting to be a part of a winning team. But he'd never seen what he felt in his heart in someone else's unbearably expressive eyes. It made his skin itch, his fingers and lips anxious for the familiar feel of a cigarette. He grabbed a lollipop instead.

“Focus,” he muttered around the sweetness, reading the tire choices again, imagining they were bathed in blue. 

A few minutes later he heard the rest of the crew starting to filter in, Bronn's smartass comments already spilling out into the hallway. The crew's chatter felt like the tide coming in, restless and eager to get going. Jaime had loved that feeling a long time ago, when the start of a new season didn't feel like slamming his head against the wall of a racing world that wanted nothing more than to keep him out. He felt a dormant flutter in his stomach now that had him rising quickly from his desk to meet the crew in the hallway. 

“Welcome to the preseason, gentlemen,” he said as they came near. 

Bronn, in the lead, halted. “Boss.”

“Everybody have a good break? Get some rest?”

They glanced at each other, perplexed, and Jaime couldn't entirely blame them. He'd been relentless the last few years, more interested in what the team had learned during the offseason then how they were feeling. 

“Are you drunk?” Bronn asked. 

Jaime huffed a laugh. “Not yet. Good coffee, I guess.” 

“Is the new mechanic here?” 

“She's already with the cars.” 

“I told you!” Bronn crowed, slapping Podrick hard on the back. “This fucker thought I'd made that up to take the piss out of him.” Podrick shrugged and smiled gamely. “Still trying to quit smoking?”

Jaime smiled around the lollipop. “Tyrion keeps telling me one day I'll set all that explosive fuel on fire and have no one to blame but myself.” Bronn laughed and Jaime led them back to where he'd left Brienne. 

He hesitated at the door and narrowed his eyes at Bronn. “Don't get us sued for sexual harassment, will you?” 

“Me? I'm a fuckin' angel.” Jaime stared blandly at him. “Fine, fine, I won't treat her any different than I treat ol' Poddy.” 

“That's what I'm afraid of.” Jaime unlocked the door and stepped inside. He saw Brienne rise from where she'd been crouched way at the back of the space, looking at the equipment there. As she stood to her full height he heard Bronn suck in a breath. 

“Didn't tell me you hired a fuckin giant,” Bronn said, his voice thankfully quiet. “She related to Tormund?”

Jaime ignored him. “Tarth!” he called. “Come here and meet the team.” She walked over, nerves and courage all over her freckled face. “Gentlemen, this is Brienne Tarth, our new chief mechanic. Tarth, this is my part of the Lannister Corp crew; everyone else doesn't show up until Monday. Bronn Blackwater will be your number two, you'll be working closely with him.” 

Bronn stepped forward, his hand thrust out. She shook it and met his forthright stare. “I don't care that you're a woman. Do you have any experience doing this sort of thing?”

“Some,” she said. 

Bronn grunted. “Chief mechanic means everything about the car goes through you.”

“I know.” 

“You think you can handle it?”

“I can,” Brienne said, and although her voice was firm, Jaime didn't like the look in her eyes. Bronn must not have either because he made a noise and turned away. She glanced at Jaime and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He wasn't going to be able to convince the team to trust her; she'd have to earn that herself. 

“Hello,” Podrick said, stepping forward and shaking her hand. “My name is P-P-Podrick. N-nice to meet you.” He smiled warmly and Jaime saw her relax a little, enough that she got through the rest of the twenty person crew without any other questions like Bronn's. 

“Everybody go get changed, we're talking tires today but if Bronn shuts the fuck up long enough we'll start inventory and regs review,” Jaime said, twirling the lollipop between his fingers before sucking on it again. 

As the team filtered back to the locker room to change, he glanced at Brienne and she was staring at him, wide-eyed and red-faced. 

“You okay, Tarth?”

“Yes,” she said, “I mean no. I need a place to change.” 

Jaime realized there was no separate locker room for women. There was a bathroom, but it felt rude to shove his chief mechanic into a stall. “There's a gym and locker room in the other building, but you can change in my office today,” he said. “Store your things there, I'll get you access to that lock, too.” 

Brienne bit her big lower lip. “Will I be getting a women's locker room in this building at some point?”

“You can't just change in the office?”

She bristled. “I can but why shouldn't I get the same accommodation as the men?”

“Because there's one of you and twenty of us.” 

“If you were a woman, you'd be fine changing in someone else's office all the time?”

Jaime grunted. “I knew you'd be a pain in my ass,” he muttered. “Fine, we'll get a locker room set up for you, but I can't promise anything soon.”

She nodded a little. “Is there a uniform I'll be wearing? I brought my coveralls.”

“We'll do sizings later this week for everybody. Those will be fine for now.” He deposited her in his office. “You can leave your stuff on that chair. Don't touch anything.” 

Jaime shut the door behind him and stood at the window for a moment, watching her look around his office, taking in the books in his tall bookshelf, his bare desk, the wall covered with photos of his cars through the years. The cars seemed to call to her and she leaned nearer, using her height to her advantage to get closer without having to move. Jaime couldn't stop staring at her hapless face, the way the tightly held barriers slid away and let the young woman peek out, curious and excited, the joy of someone brushing up against a long-held dream. He found he was leaning forward with her until she straightened and stretched her arms over her head and he desperately thought to himself _look away_ but the lift of her shirt revealed the pale strip of skin of her muscled stomach and he was trapped by it. She glanced up and jumped when she met his eyes, yanking her shirt down and going red from temple to chest, racing below the neckline of her shirt. 

“What are you doing?” she shouted through the glass and he knew he should apologize, should explain he wasn't in the habit of watching unsuspecting women. 

He should, but he didn't. Instead he smirked arrogantly and waved his lollipop at her creased brow. She strode furiously to the window and pulled the blinds shut while he tried to ignore the bitter disapproval in her big eyes.

* * *

Brienne did not look at him for most of the rest of the day and Jaime left her alone, engaging her when he genuinely needed the input of his chief mechanic, but letting her set the pace. She spent most of her time talking to the rest of the team, getting to know them and how they operated and by lunch she'd memorized everyone's names. They spent most of the day arguing about how many of each tire type they needed for the first half of the season and by the time afternoon was turning into early evening, Jaime needed a drink, a smoke, and to not be in the same room with any of these people.

“Let's call it early today,” he said just as Bronn was winding up for round three on why Pentos was not the place to test the limited durability of the C5s and they weren't going to race more than a couple laps on those so why the seven hells would they need eight tires, _Pod_. 

Bronn gestured out the wall-sized windows. “The sun hasn't even set yet.” They'd moved out of the garage to one of the nice conference rooms sometime after lunch when Jaime had realized the tires would in fact take all day.

“Yes and I don't want to watch it with you.”

“You should start smoking again,” Bronn muttered. “You're cranky enough when you are.” 

“Go home, Bronn, remind Lollys why she won't miss you once the season kicks into gear. You can stay til midnight tomorrow to make up for it.” 

Bronn flipped Jaime off and then turned to Brienne. “You want to come grab a drink with me and the boys?” 

She glanced at Jaime and he plastered an unbothered smile on his face. “I won't be there, don't worry. If I'd been invited he would have said 'the boys and the asshole.'” 

It perplexed her, he could see, the way he and Bronn talked to each other. She'd likely imagined a serious, studious crew that worked hard and played little, just like he suspected she lived her life. So dour, his new chief mechanic, so focused and stubborn. She'd talked Bronn down from two different tire choices, a feat even Jaime hadn't managed in a single day. 

“I really should get settled in,” she said softly. 

“First drink of the season is a tradition, chief. We won't keep you out too late.” 

Jaime watched her, the way her homely face ran through expressions like a billboard. He had the sudden terrifying worry she wasn't even old enough to drink, that her height and her strength had hidden her real age, but surely Tyrion would have done that research on his own and he hadn't said a word about that at least.

He'd had a lot of other words about the rest of it, though. 

“I suppose a drink would be nice,” Brienne finally said and smiled tentatively, a flash of her big teeth poking out briefly from her lips. 

The crew walked out and separated, the men to the locker room and Brienne to Jaime's office, and he pulled a piece of gum out of his mouth and chewed it like it would make a cigarette magically appear. He'd wanted nicotine gum but his doctor had suggested he just abstain entirely, knowing Jaime had no capacity for moderation. 

He wandered the quiet halls. This would be the last time they'd be this way in daylight until the season was over. Even in August when Jaime and the crew took a break, there was usually someone in the building, fine-tuning an engine piece here, testing out a new wing there. It was quieter but not like this. 

“She's tall,” Jaime heard Bronn say as he neared the locker room. In the stillness, even small sounds carried. “Big hands. Gonna be hard for her to get in some of those engine parts.” 

“Old Giantsbane does fine and he's at least as big as she is.” That was young Lucion Lannister, some distant cousin that Tywin had found when Jaime had demanded the entire crew be replaced. Many of the pit crew were related or owed his family for one reason or another, but they'd all come with relevant credentials. Racing ran deep in the Lannister bloodlines and relationships. 

Jaime hovered outside the door, curious to find out the crew's initial impressions. “I don't get how she's chief mechanic if she has no experience,” Willem Lannister, one of Jaime's other cousins, whined. “It's not fair.” 

“You think you can build a whole car?” Bronn said, his voice dry. “You can't even get a tire on right.”

“That was _one time_!”

“It's a fuckin' tire and we practice constantly, it shouldn't have even happened once.”

“I-I-I look f-forward to w-working w-w-w-with her.”

“She's too big and ugly for you to fuck, Pod, she'd swallow you whole,” Willem's twin brother, Martyn, said. Jaime bristled, but Bronn spoke up before he could move. 

“Shut the fuck up, Martyn. That's your new chief mechanic.”

“She's not too big for Lannister,” Willem said, dropping his voice but not enough to hide it from the hallway. 

“He doesn't have to hire someone to fuck them, asshole,” Bronn said. 

“You know how fragile his ego is. Maybe she resisted his charms and he had no choice,” Martyn replied.

“That doesn't explain you,” Jaime said snidely as he barged in on their conversation. Willem at least had the decency to look embarrassed; Martyn glared back like a petulant teenager. “I've watched enough tapes to know you're the slowest part of the crew. Do you think the only reason I keep you two useless bags around is to fuck you? Or is it your mother you think I'm after?” They tensed and he saw Martyn's hands tighten into fists. First day of the season and Jaime already wanted a fight. But even his sponsors wouldn't like him punching his own men. “I wouldn't do that to your poor mother, though, she's already been burdened enough by having you two. Now stop gossiping about your new boss like a pack of old men and get the fuck out of here.” 

Martyn grabbed his stuff and stalked out, banging his shoulder into Jaime's on his way. Willem scurried after, shamefaced, and the rest followed, most eyeing him warily, though Podrick gave him a warm smile and patted him on the same shoulder Martyn had hit. 

Bronn pursed his lips. “She's going to have to fight her own battles.” 

“I know, but she wasn't here to fight this one.” 

“You think so?” he said, nodding at something behind Jaime, and when Jaime turned to look there was Brienne hovering in the doorway, pale and hurt, her eyes downcast. 

“Shit,” Jaime muttered, and Bronn slipped by them both.

“We'll wait for you in the lobby,” he told Brienne as he walked by. “Don't let them keep you from coming with us.” 

She nodded silently. 

“Tarth-”

“I know how to handle myself,” she said in a stronger voice than he'd expected. 

“We're all professionals and supposedly adults. If they have something to say, they can say it to your face and we'll deal with it there. I hate gossip,” he said, his own vehemence surprising him. 

“You shouldn't have hired me.” 

“Quitting already?”

“No,” she said firmly, and she lifted her head, her blue eyes bright as halogens. “You shouldn't have, but you did and I agreed to it and I knew to expect this. But there's nothing you can do about their stupid talking without turning the team against you. Don't do that.”

“Don't do...” Jaime's brows drew together. “Are you mad at _me_? For protecting your honor?”

“_My_ honor? You didn't step in until your name came up.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know you didn't bother to defend my skills.” 

He hated that she was right. They'd worked together less than a day and she'd been right more times than he cared to admit. It was a good quality in a chief mechanic and a damned annoying one in a person he was trying to help. “You should go, they won't wait forever.” He brushed past her and her soap scent and her big eyes, then paused at the door. “I wasn't spying on you earlier, or trying to be creepy,” he said. 

“Well, don't do it again,” she said. And then, unexpectedly as he started to leave, added “good night, Mr. Lannister.” 

“Jaime,” he only replied, walking out the door.

* * *

Bronn, Podrick, and the others were chatting when Brienne entered the lobby, and it died down when they saw her. Bronn nudged Willem with his elbow and the man stepped forward, clearing his throat.

“Sorry what I said about you,” he offered, and if he didn't mean it, he was a good liar. Martyn just folded his arms over his chest and stared her down. 

“Sorry you have such an ass for a brother,” she told Willem, and the other men erupted in laughter as Martyn's face went tense and tight. 

She'd likely find reason to regret that later with Martyn, but she'd broken the tension for the rest of the men and they all shuffled together out of the complex into the darkening evening. Sandor was waiting, leaning back against the towncar, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“One second,” she told the crew before hurrying over to him. “We're going drinking,” she said. “I don't think I'll need you to drive me home tonight, I can just get a cab.”

“Great, count me in.” He pushed off of the car and ambled over to the crowd where he was greeted with a rousing course of '”The Hound!” 

Brienne blinked after him. This entire crew was going to take getting used to, she thought, though none more than Jaime himself. She trailed after the group as they walked along the quiet business park to a small shopping center packed with restaurants and bars a few blocks away. 

The Jaime Lannister that Brienne the Fan had known was a brash, reckless, arrogant man with deep appetites for speed, drinking, and women by all accounts. The Jaime Lannister that Brienne the Chief Mechanic had found today was arrogant for sure, but more bitter than she had ever realized, more committed and knowledgeable than she could have ever imagined. Arguing with Bronn about tire choices had felt like exercising, difficult but only because it was building new skills. Arguing with Jaime had been frustrating and maddening and utterly, annoyingly, invigorating, especially when she'd gotten him to agree with her. 

Brienne kicked a rock into the street, smiled at Pod when he glanced back to make sure she was following. Jaime had been watching her in his office, leaning towards her with a look on his face she couldn't hope to understand. But then he'd sucked on that gods-damned lollipop half the day and when she looked at him she'd been unable to focus on anything but his lips made red from the candy. So she'd just not looked, ignoring him except where they absolutely had to talk. She'd been as inappropriate as him in her own way, and she would not let it happen again, either. 

Podrick fell back to walk with her. “Everything okay?” he asked, speaking slowly and measured.

“I'm tired,” she admitted. “It's been a big day.” 

“I remember my first day. It was w-worse than yours.” He took a breath, kept speaking in a way that drew the words out so he was almost singing them. His voice was lovely, rich and warm. “My stutter g-gets worse when I'm nervous. Or have to keep up with everyone else. My first day I was a target.”

“You started after he came back didn't you?”

“That was my f-first year.”

Brienne thought of the pictures she'd seen, of how much younger and happier Jaime had looked before the accident. “You must have been young.”

“Eighteen. I couldn't even drink,” he sing-songed. 

“How did you get through it?”

“J-Jaime. He had everybody s-sing-talk for a week. Once they got used to hearing it, knew h-how much effort it takes, they backed off.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Bronn has a-a-a terrible voice.” 

Brienne laughed, the loud rolling sound she tried to keep smothered most of the time. The men in front looked over their shoulders at them. 

“What lies are you telling her, Podrick?” Bronn yelled back and Pod just shrugged, grinning. “Don't listen to him, Chief. He takes so long to talk he has extra time to think about his stories.” 

The group arrived at the sports bar and filtered inside. Brienne held the door for Pod, who smiled shyly at her. “Thank you for w-waiting for me t-to talk.”

“Any time,” she said sincerely. “And if I get impatient going forward, just poke me a little.” 

“W-will do, boss.” 

_Boss_. She supposed she was his boss, the boss of all of them. Brienne watched as some of the large group peeled off to the bar while the rest found tables to push together. It wasn't too busy here given it was a Sunday night and most people were at home with their families, getting ready for the work week. These men would become a surrogate family for the season, side-by-side day in and day out, sharing hoped-for triumphs and probable defeats. All of them doing it for Jaime. 

She thought of the way he'd smiled so gently at the car before everyone else had arrived. That smile had been the one from early in his career, before the accident that had killed Aerys and turned loose Jaime's demons. It was a smile she wanted to see again. 

_No_, she told herself firmly. _There is no softness to that man._ But when her thoughts wandered relentlessly towards Jaime and the idealistic young man that he had once been, she eagerly grabbed the tall glass of beer Podrick passed her way and gulped it all down to the sound of cheers.

* * *

Brienne woke up at ass-early-o-clock Monday morning in her new bed and regretted every drink she'd had the night before. She had swiftly forgotten about Jaime, but she'd also forgotten how loud she got when she was drunk, as well as almost everyone's names and, she realized now, some parts of the evening. The Hound did end up driving her home and also made sure she got into her apartment, complaining the entire time.

“You know Lannister doesn't pay extra for this,” she recalled him saying when she'd gotten too dizzy to walk up the stairs unassisted. It was a good thing he was bigger than her. 

He'd left her at the door and she'd managed to get to her bed and collapse into it and now her mouth and brain both felt like something furry and long dead had taken root and she definitely did not have any aspirin or decent food to eat and this morning was going to be a nightmare. 

After a warm shower that eased a little of the headache, Brienne pulled on clothes and brushed her teeth and stared at the tiny amount of bread and cheese left for breakfast. She wrapped them up in a paper towel and shoved them in her purse, deciding to save them for lunch instead, and went downstairs to see if the little store across the street was open. Sandor was already at the curb. 

“You look like as much shit as I expected,” he said. But he held out a steaming cup and a greasy bag that smelled like bacon and her stomach rumbled so she decided to forgive him. 

After she'd taken a sip of the coffee and a bite of the food she sighed gratefully. “Did you wait here all night?”

“No. But we're going to need to set a regular pick-up time, I'm starting to get weird looks from the cops.” Brienne smiled and he only grunted. “Get in the car and don't spill anything or you have to clean it up.”

Sandor produced a couple of aspirin as well and by the time they arrived at the Lannister Corp building she felt almost recovered. She could at least convince Jaime she was operating on all cylinders. She was pretty sure. 

They were even earlier than yesterday and not even Jaime's car was in the parking lot. Sandor handed her a key ring with three keys on it. 

“Lannister wanted me to give this to you yesterday. Opens up the front door, the inner door to the working area, and the door to his office. I'll text you my number later. Give me a half hour notice before you need to leave, anywhere, any time.”

“Are you my personal driver?”

“Order of the boss.”

“Which one?”

Sandor grinned and it was not friendly. “Not allowed to share that. Just know you don't pay for my services, but I'll come when you call. Tips are appreciated.” 

Brienne gripped her purse and was doing a mental calculation of how much money she had, divided by how far he'd driven her, when Sandor burst out laughing. 

“Gods you're too naïve, lady. They're going to walk all over you.” Still chuckling he climbed into the car and drove away. 

“Thanks,” she muttered to the empty parking lot and then let herself into the building. Brienne wandered the hallways, repeating names to herself, making a mental map of where each general area of the building was, touching photos with gentle fingers as she passed. There was history in these walls, ghosts of all the workers and the weight of everything they'd learned and shared throughout Lannister Corp's racing past. Now all that knowledge and history was hers to direct to a car that was as much an engineering marvel as an airplane. 

She stopped in front of Jaime's office and peered through the window, found it empty as she'd expected. Brienne unlocked his door and turned on a tall floor lamp to get a better look at his bookshelf. There were books on racing, of course, biographies and technical manuals both, but also a section for philosophy and another on leadership. Brienne grabbed one written by his own father and started reading, settling into the surprisingly comfortable executive's chair behind Jaime's desk. 

Brienne was well into the book, taking mental notes about the kind of man Tywin Lannister seemed to be, when the door to Jaime's office suddenly opened. She let out a small surprised yelp and dropped the book to the table and when she looked up she felt her whole body flush red. Jaime stood in the doorway wearing only a towel low on his hips and a frown on his face. 

“I thought I told you not to touch anything,” he said, his hair wet and slicked back, the warm light of the floor lamp caressing the muscles of his chest. The sparse hair there was a dark gold and still damp from the shower he'd obviously just taken, and it disappeared under the towel in a line she found herself wanting to follow. Brienne closed her mouth and looked down at the book on the desk. Tywin Lannister glared at her from the back cover, as though he was aware of the sudden rush of inappropriate thoughts she'd just had about his son.

“It's just a book,” she said to herself and Jaime both. 

“Yes and it's just mine.” There were soft footsteps and she smelled Jaime's clean soap scent, something pleasantly musky, before he stopped in front of the desk, picking up the book. “Why this one?”

“I wanted to get to know how your father thinks,” she said, staring intently at the dark wood of the desk and not anywhere near Jaime's half-naked body, though it was still clear as a photograph in her mind.

“An impossible task.” There was a dark note to his voice, like the bitter aftertaste of an old wine and she risked a glance up, hurrying past the dip of his hipbones and his pink nipples and the swoop of his shoulder, to his face. Jaime was glaring down at Tywin's picture, clenching the spine of the book so tightly she could see the indents of his fingers. He lifted his eyes to hers and she felt pinned to the chair as surely as if those strong hands held her there. “Find anything you like?” he asked and it took her ten seconds too long to figure out he was referring to the book and not himself. 

“Um, not really,” she managed, knowing her face was hopelessly red. Jaime tossed the book behind him on another chair and smiled, a slow curve of his lips. 

“Still have a hangover from last night?”

“What? Did Bronn say something?”

“No,” he said, “I did receive an unexpected text message a couple of hours after you left here, though.” 

Brienne's hand went to her phone and then the memory of what had happened popped up, summoned from the gray haze of the evening. They'd been several drinks in when Brienne had been telling Bronn, Podrick, and Sandor about how Jaime said she and Sandor had a lot in common when she'd remembered the 'fuck you' text she'd typed and never sent. 

She was pretty sure it was Sandor who told her to send it, and it had seemed like an excellent idea at the time. 

“Mr. Lannister-”

“No, I'm sure I deserved it, given I wasn't even sure which of several things it was for.” 

“I shouldn't have sent it though, I'm sorry.” 

“Well, don't do it again,” he said, parroting her own words from yesterday. “I'm going to get dressed and then we can set you up with access to the garage.” He came around before she could scramble out of the chair and she was trapped between the lamp and his big, warm body. He bent down near her legs and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out a rolled up bundle. The long curve of his back, arched like some golden wing, was almost unbearably tempting to touch, so she gripped the arms of the chair more tightly and leaned back and away from him. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, desperate. 

“I needed a change of clothes from my desk.”

He stood and then leaned across the table directly in front of her, so his towel-covered thighs hovered near her as he grabbed a lollipop from a mug in the shape of some flat-nosed cat breed filled with them. 

“Don't you have clothes at home?” she asked accusingly. He had no right to be so handsome and so close to her. He'd probably not even been home, but been out with one of the many women he was always rumored to be sleeping with. She stared at her own hand on the chair, gone white with lack of blood. 

“Late night,” he murmured, standing back up and grinning down at her as though her heart wasn't racing faster than any engine. “Meet you at the door in ten.” Jaime unwrapped the lollipop and stuck it in his mouth and Brienne decided, as she watched him saunter out of the office, that maybe the little girls of the world would be better off being inspired by someone who wasn't rendered speechless at the sight of a little chest hair. 

She rubbed both her hands down her face and exhaled. “Focus,” she told herself, though mostly what she was focusing on behind her closed eyes were the way his shoulder muscles had stretched and contracted right under her nose. “I am here to work,” Brienne announced to the empty room. “To learn what I can and build a resume for somewhere else and then get the seven hells away again.”

She just had to get away before she made a fool of herself in front of Jaime.

* * *

Jaime was a fool.

After Brienne had left with Bronn and the others the night before, he'd paced around the empty building, unreasonably mad at not being invited, too, even though he'd refused his crew's invitations for years. He'd invited himself over to Tyrion's instead; Tyrion, however, had had the audacity of not being home. 

“Where are you?” he'd asked into the phone, and Tyrion had laughed in his ear. 

“Out trying to get laid, big brother. Sounds like you should try it, too.”

“Don't you have work tomorrow?” 

“I do, and I'll be much happier about it if I get laid tonight. What about that new mechanic of yours? Tried her out?”

“I didn't hire her to fuck her,” Jaime had said, incensed. 

“The Hound says she's ugly but very tall, do you think she'd be interested in a man my size? I could be just the right height for her, you know. Tongue-level.” 

Jaime had hung up without another word and left in a pique, getting on his motorcycle to drive away the restlessness. The hills around the outskirts of King's Landing were a welcome, winding challenge that he knew would be deserted at night. There were few lights outside of the solitary beam of his headlight and the half-moon, but he took the corners tight and fast, their twists familiar to him from endless nights like this, wind rushing over his body, the growl of the engine between his legs deeper than his car's. He loosed the throttle and leaned into the curves and focused only on the road unfolding in his small light in the darkness. Halfway through the night when he'd stopped by the side of the road to relieve himself and pop in a new piece of gum, he'd seen the message from Brienne and gaped at it. 

“Fuck _me_?” he'd said to the crickets and the stars. He tried to imagine the very serious Brienne Tarth cursing at him in person, those words falling from her thick lips, and he wondered if he should have fucked someone tonight instead, maybe Melara since he'd just been with Taena. They were both always willing and welcoming and the constant crunch of racing season activities would be here soon enough to make those opportunities rare. But it was already after midnight and getting to either of their houses would put him after three in the morning, so he pushed on to Rosby.

Rosby had greeted him as the sun peeked over the horizon, a town much smaller than King's Landing, just a pit stop on the way to something bigger. Jaime stopped to gas up his bike and stared down the main road back out of Rosby, the one that would take him to Antlers or Maidenpool and from there wherever he wanted to go, him and his motorcycle and the uncomplaining road, just for a few days. But his father would take his missing even a single day of preseason as reason enough to yell about his every failure for a month; multiple days may finally convince him to cut Jaime loose and he wasn't ready to capitulate to Tywin Lannister. Not when Jaime could feel in his bones this season could be something remarkable. 

So Jaime had turned his motorcycle back towards King's Landing and driven straight to the garage. He hadn't even realized Brienne was there until after he'd had his shower and he stood outside the office, watching her through the window. She'd been so intent on what she was reading, her brow furrowed in concentration, her long, thick fingers surprisingly delicate as she turned the page. What he should have done was leave her be and put back on the clothes he'd worn last night. 

Jaime was terrible at doing what he should. 

Now he was suffering for it, unable to stop thinking about her in his chair, him kneeling at her feet. When he'd bent down to get his clothes he'd been distracted by how much leg she had, unable to even fit both of them under his desk so the one nearest Jaime had been bent and slightly opened. An invitation in a willing woman, but he suspected Brienne would have dropped dead of embarrassment or disdain before she meant it for him. It didn't stop him thinking about the possibilities, though. Jaime ground down on his lollipop while Brienne hovered over the lock putting in her fingerprint. 

“Will you stop chewing on that?” she muttered, not even looking at him. “You sound like a wood chipper.”

He chomped down, cracking the candy into shards in his mouth and she glared at him over her shoulder. “What's the matter, Wrench, sensitive ears?”

Brienne went stiff. “What did you call me?”

“Wrench, like you're a wrench in my ability to have a good day.”

“My name is Brienne,” she grumbled, focusing on the door again. It clicked open and dragged both of them back to the most important matter at hand: Jaime's car. 

“Always close the door firmly behind you,” he told her as he pushed past her to get inside first. 

“I see the honeymoon phase is over.”

“We're not married, Wrench, we're partners.”

She frowned at him. “Isn't that basically the same thing?”

Jaime snorted, threw the now barren lollipop stick in the trash. “Not in my experience. Come on, I want you to do a review and tell me what needs to be adjusted for this year's regs.”

Brienne approached his car as reverently as the first time and Jaime felt that same warm punch in his chest at the way her face opened and poured out her admiration for his beautiful girl. He'd never call the car that in anyone's hearing, but on race day, just before the engines roared, he'd mute the mic and whisper it to her like an invocation. His new chief mechanic seemed to be feeling the same if the way she ran her hand over top of the intake was any indication. 

They worked placidly enough for awhile, Brienne walking around the car, opening it up to examine it more closely, always with deft and gentle hands. She would briefly call out a change to him and he'd put it in the laptop before watching her again. Brienne had questions, too, thoughtful and probing ones and he was glad when Bronn came in to take up answering them. She was sharp and in an hour was already a level deeper than he felt comfortable tackling alone. 

Jaime left them talking chassis and found the building had filled up while he and Brienne had been with the cars. Engineers and mechanics and even a few executives, all ready to start another season. He nodded to those who were his own crew and the rest he blew past. They were hired by and worked for his father and they were not on his side, no matter what Tywin Lannister told the media about 'one team' and 'we all fight for each other.' They were the ones who would use their data reports on race day trying to get him to slow down so Lancel could have a lap just to help Lannister Corp climb up the constructor rankings, no matter what it did to Jaime's race.

Lancel himself was glad handing away Jaime saw, and when their eyes met over the cubicle walls he shot Jaime his fakest smile. 

“Cousin!” Lancel shouted, everyone looking up. “Happy first day of the preseason!”

“Second day for me,” Jaime drawled back without stopping. 

Lancel's smile turned bitter for an instant. “Heard you got a new number one mechanic. She any good?” he asked, giving the words a lascivious undertone.

“Best mechanic in Westeros,” Jaime said firmly. 

“Mm. I've never heard of her.”

“You're just there to block other cars for me, so I wouldn't expect you to.” 

Lancel glared at him and Jaime smiled sweetly before finally reaching his office door and escaping inside. He watched Lancel go back to glad-handing with a new tightness to his thin lips. Jaime muttered a quiet curse before closing the blinds on the whole charade. He'd hear about this later from his father and uncle even though it was nothing anyone who'd been on the team last year would be surprised by. 

Jaime spent the rest of his day locked in his office, going through emails and appointments, watching his calendar fill up with public appearances, test days, fittings, training sessions, meetings with sponsors, and the thousand other non-racing activities required of a professional driver. All he really wanted was to get back to his car, sit with his team and go over the details, argue with Brienne over the minutiae while her blues eyes went from eager to enraged and back again. 

There was a knock at his door and he saw Brienne through the window as though he'd summoned her. 

“Come in,” he called, closing his laptop and settling back in his chair. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he'd worked through lunch.

“I hope I'm not interrupting you.”

“You are but I needed an interruption. How's it going?”

She handed him a sheet of paper with neat writing covering most of it. “We made some last decisions on the tires and wanted to run them by you. Bronn is out talking to engineers about changes to your car, some from the new requirements, like the new light, some things he thinks could be fixed from last year.”

“You've been productive.” 

Brienne frowned down at him. She really was startlingly tall, especially when he was seated. He wondered how it would look from the car, where he was even lower to the ground. “I came here to work, Mr. Lannister.”

“It was just an observation,” Jaime said, lifting an eyebrow. “When are you going to just call me Jaime, Wrench?”

“When you call me Brienne. They provided lunch for us,” she continued. “Did you get any?”

“No, mom.”

Her cheeks reddened, but she held out a waxed paper square. “I saved you a sandwich,” she muttered. 

Jaime took it and felt like a heel. “Race weekends I have a routine but the rest of the time I forget things like eating regularly.” 

“I'll keep that in mind,” she said and he knew somehow she would and it made him shift in his chair, uncomfortable with the small act of thoughtfulness. As she'd said back on Tarth: she didn't even know him. He was desperate for a cigarette, for the feel of smoke held for a long moment in his lungs choking out all the good air, anything to distract himself from the quiet purr in his heart. 

“You don't have to watch me eat it, I am an adult,” he said sharply. 

Her eyes flashed. “Adults take care of their basic needs.” 

“I'm sure you floss twice a day and never leave the toilet seat up.”

“I'm sure you're wearing week-old underwear.”

“You're a terrible bore. No wonder your father was eager to pawn you off on me,” he said and she went rigid and almost purple and he had the briefest sense he was in danger of getting punched in the face. 

He did not spare a thought for why that idea excited him. 

“Bronn wanted you to give us your concurrence on the tires tonight,” she said between clenched teeth. “We're meeting in conference room two to finish talking about large scale timelines for the car launch. You can drop them off there.” She turned her tall body in a smooth motion and barely slowed down to open and then slam the door shut again behind her. 

“Perfect start to the season,” Jaime muttered. He grabbed the sandwich and got back to work, each bite tasting like a reprimand.

* * *

The rest of the week went no better. Every time he swore he wouldn't pick at Brienne, the second she opened up even a little to him he would snap at her, like her kindness was a poison. She was everywhere, as she should be, and even though he tried to escape by studying last year's performances and taking interviews on the phone, they ran into each other constantly; twenty times a day where Jaime could prove just how much more of a jerk he could be.

She held the door open for him one morning and he called her “my knight in shining armor” in a sarcastic tone that made her growl. She offered to walk him through what the engineers had been doing with the airflow valve and he snapped that he didn't need her to translate for him to dummy driver speak. When he walked down the hall, head down over a track report that he really could have used her input on, she'd asked how he was and he'd snarled “fine” in a tone that held no politeness and had made her swallow hard and snap back “I was, too, until ten seconds ago.” 

Jaime was getting sick of himself and she must have, too, because her kindness had been entirely absent the last day, just a cold, professional wall and 'Mr. Lannister' delivered in a cold, professional voice. 

He worked late, got in early, and by Friday night was a disheveled, exhausted mess slumped over the laptop in his office as he watched everyone else shutting down their computers for the night. Jaime wanted to go to the gym in the other building, but he'd discovered on Wednesday Brienne used it after work, so he decided to wait in his office until she was likely to be gone. He was definitely not hiding and he would yell at anyone who suggested it. 

As his laptop clock turned to seven pm, Bronn came in without knocking and glared down at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Jaime blinked and held out his hands. “Where do I start?”

“Don't give me that shit. Why are you treating Brienne like you've got a personal vendetta against her?”

“I'm not-” but he stopped because he and Bronn both knew he'd just be lying. “I don't know,” he said instead. “Doesn't she irritate you?”

“She's a fuckin' mechanical genius, Pod already follows her around like a puppy, and she treats the rest of us respectfully even though gods know they don't deserve it. What part of that is irritating?”

Jaime glared out the window at her empty desk. “The rest of it. She argues constantly.” 

“Isn't arguing your love language?” 

“She brought me a sandwich!” Jaime said, as though it didn't make him sound like a three-year old having a tantrum. 

“Sounds terrible for you.”

“She must want something,” Jaime protested. 

“She wants you to eat, you stupid cunt.” 

“Did you just come here to harangue me?”

“Yes!” Bronn leaned down, putting his hands flat on Jaime's desk. “I don't know how you managed it, but you found a real diamond here. Don't break her before she gets a chance to shine.” 

“I really enjoy these talks. Anything else?”

Bronn glared down at him, but stood again and crossed his arms over his chest. “Any leads on a race engineer?”

“What do you think?” Jaime grumbled. “Who wants to spend that much time with me?”

“Not me, that's for fucking sure. But I know someone who would.”

Jaime smirked at Bronn. “By the time Pod told me what I needed to hear I'd be three laps around the course.”

“Not Pod, you dipstick. Brienne.” 

“Make her race engineer? Are you really that desperate to be chief mechanic?”

“I don't want that kind of stress. Why can't she be both?”

“Aren't you the one that told me one minute ago to not break her? She has no experience at that level. It's bad enough I've yanked her from F3 to this.” 

Bronn lifted an eyebrow. “If you'd get your head out of your ass for one second you'd see that jump has been little problem for her.”

“She can't be chief mechanic and race engineer anyway.” 

“Why not?”

“No one's ever done both in a single season. It's just not how this works.”

“Yes, because that's what everyone thinks when they hear your name: Jaime Lannister, Conformist,” Bronn said dryly. 

Jaime pursed his lips. “I will find a race engineer and it will not be Brienne Tarth.” 

“It's your call, boss.”

“It is,” Jaime insisted. “Mark my words, Bronn, I'll have a lead on a race engineer by Monday.”

Bronn snorted. “Okay, boss.” He headed for the door. “Good night, boss. Don't forget to eat, boss.” 

“Stop calling me that!” Jaime shouted after his disappearing form. Bronn flipped him off through the window. 

Jaime opened his laptop and then almost immediately slammed it shut again. “Fuck,” he said to the room. How was he going to find a race engineer – the person he'd be most tightly tied to the entire season – when everyone he'd even looked at for the role had put up Not Interested signals? Race engineers didn't just grow on trees or appear in random mechanic shops. They required a special blend of people and technical skills as well as grace under pressure and the ability to make fast decisions that were almost impossible to find. 

Jaime imagined Brienne for a moment as the only voice in his ear as he was in the thick of a race, his sole link to the team and the world outside of his cockpit, feeding him data points and racing suggestions and encouragement. Would she be able to take in all of the different teams' input and pick what mattered most? Would she push back against Tywin's edicts to put Lannister Corp before Jaime's own dreams? Jaime pressed his fingertips into the smooth wood of his desk. She'd probably just berate him for not making a clean run. 

“It will not be Brienne Tarth,” he said to his empty office, and opened up his laptop again to email a fresh set of contacts for leads.

* * *

Brienne slept in Saturday until the now luxurious hour of seven-thirty in the morning and woke feeling groggy with more sleep than she'd had for a week. Since the Sunday night drinking session she'd spent her evenings poring over technical manuals, regs, and the wealth of past Lannister Corp experience documented in neatly arranged files. Bronn had put together what he considered critical knowledge for her but Brienne had ranged further, wanting to know as much as possible.

It didn't make a damn bit of difference to Jaime. Every time she was friendly towards him, every time she made a helpful suggestion, every time she was anything except reserved and professional, he'd snarl or snark at her and call her 'Wrench' until she'd wanted to push him into the path of one of the big trucks that occasionally rumbled down the road outside. He didn't treat any of the rest of the crew like that; he wasn't friendly to any of them but he wasn't as biting, either, and even his clear hatred for Lancel was more a clean sword's edge than what he did with her. With Brienne it was smartass comments meant to push her away, even when they'd shared a moment of connection over something about the car only a moment before. It was exhausting.

She'd known he would be difficult based on the interviews she'd watched through the years; she had not expected him to be so personally obnoxious. It was annoying that the obnoxiousness didn't make him any less handsome, either, as though it added that alluring flash to his bright green eyes or the sharpness to his predator smile. 

“What am I doing?” Brienne sighed to her ceiling, before rolling out of bed for a leisurely shower and breakfast. She'd squirreled away the free food they offered all week so that she'd been able to make it to today, her first official day off. She had a list of chores as long as her arm, starting with a visit to the market for fresh food. 

When she got out of the shower, there were a series of texts from Jaime.

'Are you there?'

'Call me asap'

'Wrench?'

'You better be dead or my father will kill you for not showing up'

Brienne frowned. She knew today was an off day, the guys had not stopped talking about their plans all afternoon as they hunched over small engine parts and diagrams. 

'It's Saturday' she texted back. 'No work for me.'

His response was swift. 'Do you actually read your email?'

A cold chill washed through her and she hurriedly opened her laptop. Busy with her studying and the meetings with the team, Brienne had let her mail reading slide until this weekend, assuming if there was anything important someone would just flag her down in person, which had proven to be true so far. Scanning subject lines quickly, she saw a calendar invite from Wednesday that she'd blown right by, and when she opened it her heart sank. It was an invitation to attend Westeros Sports Network's 'Meet the Team' taping for Lannister Corp, and there was her name on the Required line. She glanced at the time and the location and groaned, already texting Sandor that she needed him, fast. 

'Five minutes away' he texted back and she thanked the Seven as she rushed around finding the cleanest outfit she had left – laundry had also been on her To Do list today – brushed her teeth and hair and glared at her reflection in the mirror. She should have made it a clause in the contract that she wouldn't have to do any interviews. She didn't have the quick wit for print or the face for TV. Why had she even been invited? Chief mechanics almost never did interviews, and certainly not this early in the season. A shiver of nerves and fear went through her. _What if this is all some joke?_ a dark thought warned her. _Like before._

Griffin team may have thought her a freak, but she'd come to them first. It beggared belief that Jaime Lannister would go out of his way to seek her out uninvited, pay her good money, get her an apartment, and give her access to his car and his team's secrets just to make fun of her publicly, when he hadn't even known she existed before a few weeks ago. Had it really only been that long? Her life was already so different here that Tarth felt like a nostalgic dream and not the home she would return to in a year. 

'On my way' she sent Jaime after she'd thrown herself into Sandor's car outside. 

'Tell the Hound to hurry. Lancel's almost done and then Tywin and then us.' 

If Sandor were any sort of dog today, he was a greyhound, zipping and careening through the sleepy Saturday morning streets of King's Landing like chasing a rabbit. They got there ten minutes before even her wildest expectations and she could have kissed him in relief if he'd have let her. As it was he just grunted at her effusive thanks and sped off again as soon as she was out the door. 

Brienne pressed a hand against her jumping stomach and hurried inside. The receptionist looked happy to see her, but she was the only one as make-up and hair hustled her into and out of their chairs and to the associate producer who glared at her and shoved her over to Jaime. 

Hair and make-up and been kind to him, and the shadow of a beard was so perfectly formed on his sharp jaw she wondered if someone had painted it there. In his crisply pressed tan slacks and black polo shirt open at the throat he was almost impossible to look at, like some creature from fairy tales that blinded people, except with handsomeness not ugliness. 

That, she thought glumly, was more her deal. 

“Morning,” he said when she halted. He looked her up and down with a discerning glance, and quickly looked back towards Tywin who was wrapping up. “Good choice.” 

Brienne had selected a women's jumpsuit of deep blue that she knew complimented her eyes, brought some color to her pale skin, and made the most of her legs, which she'd often thought were a hit or miss body part; sometimes she thought they looked long and elegant and the rest of the time she felt like an overly tall flamingo. But it was the nicest outfit she had outside of the black cocktail dress she'd bought just in case. The make-up lady had applied a pale rose blush to her cheeks and darker lipstick that brought out the thickness in her lips in a way that made Brienne self-consciously press them together to make them smaller. 

She watched Tywin as he finished his interview, curious about the man who'd invoked such a strong response in his own son. He looked to be in his late 50s and athletically built, with the same strong nose Jaime had, his hair shaved close to his head in the manner of a man who didn't have time or inclination for the disorder and nuisance of hair styling or aging. Everything about him was tightly controlled, and his ramrod straight posture in the interview chair didn't make him look uncomfortable, it made him look like a lord being tended to. There was no softness to him at all, even as he thanked Melisandre for the interview. 

“What do we do?” she whispered as Tywin stood and took off his microphone. 

“You didn't talk to PR did you?”

Brienne made a face. “When would I have had time?”

“Just answer the lady's questions and try not to give away any of our secrets.” Jaime straightened when Tywin walked up. “Father.”

“I hear you're giving up smoking. You should talk about that if you think you can actually do it.” Tywin gave Brienne a once over similar to his son's, but his green eyes entirely lacked Jaime's natural warmth. “You're a tall one. The new mechanic.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.” 

“That was all Jaime's doing. I would have hired someone with more experience if they would have agreed to work with him.”

Jaime went as tense as an ignition coil and, she imagined, just as ready to spark. “You insulted both of us in one swipe, father. Well hit.” 

“Don't take it so personally.”

“With you? I never do.” Brienne could see Jaime's jaw clenching underneath the stubble. “I'm sure Lancel will appreciate you talking him up so much, even though he'll never live up to it.”

Tywin looked unamused, his features carved from ice. “I'm used to family members never living up to my expectations,” he said. “Ms. Tarth.” He nodded his head curtly and stalked away, people clearing a path before him without a word. 

Jaime stared at his back, daggers of fury and hurt. “Is he what you expected from the book?”

“No,” Brienne said quietly. “He's much worse.”

Jaime's chin came up and he looked at her, startled, his eyes searching hers. The pain dimmed, the tight lines of his forehead smoothed, and Brienne felt pulled in by the warmth he'd seemed so desperate to deny her this week unless they were talking about his car. Jaime swallowed and she was distracted by the movement of his tanned throat. 

“Jaime Lannister!” A familiar voice cut between them, followed by a beautiful woman with long, shockingly red hair. Melisandre van Houten, lead Formula 1 reporter for WSN, floated over, took Jaime's hands in hers and kissed him on both cheeks. 

“Melisandre,” he said, giving her a charming smile. “It's good to see you.”

“That would be a first for you, darling. Are you going to behave yourself today?” 

“As long as you don't give me a reason not to.” 

“So no, then.” She turned and took one of Brienne's big hands in her two much smaller ones. “Brienne Tarth. I have been so looking forward to meeting you.” She smiled and it looked sincere. 

“I'm excited to be here; I've watched you for years,” Brienne said.

“Not too many years, I hope,” Melisandre said with a throaty laugh. Brienne had always wanted a laugh like that, sexy but still welcoming. “Come, let's get you set up. We don't usually have mechanics for this segment, but Jaime insisted we invite you.”

Brienne glanced over at him and he shrugged. “I hate doing these alone.” 

They got settled in the chairs with their microphone packs and the make-up woman came over one more time to frown at Brienne's face and try to salvage something, wiping off some of the lipstick and applying a thick eyeliner. She stepped back, tilted her head, and nodded, looking pleased. “Great eyes,” she said before disappearing again. 

When Brienne looked over at Jaime he was watching her intently, his lips slightly parted. “Is it terrible?” she whispered. 

“No,” he whispered back. “She's right.” 

The associate producer called them to attention, interrupting any further discussion, and they were off. 

“Welcome back to Meet the Team: Lannister Corp Racing. Our next guest is one of the most talented and infamous drivers in the entire sport, Jaime Lannister. Welcome, Jaime.” 

If she hadn't been sitting right next to him, Brienne likely would never have known the way his whole body had tensed at Melisandre's introduction, and his roguish smile betrayed none of the feelings she'd seen as his fingers had tightened almost imperceptibly on his knees. “Always a pleasure,” he said lightly.

“We have an unexpected guest with you today, and someone whose mere presence is already making news in racing circles: your new chief mechanic, Brienne Tarth.” 

Brienne swallowed and nodded. “Thank you for having me,” she said quietly, trying to ignore the cameras and the bright lights already making her sweat. 

“Brienne, you're the first woman chief mechanic in Formula One history, and it seems like you've come out of nowhere. Tell me how you got here.” 

“Well, I do have some experience in F3,” she started, awkward, wishing she'd prepared at all, when Jaime stepped in.

“Lannister Corp were not the only ones interested in Brienne,” he said. “Robb Stark knew how good she was, too. We just managed to convince her it was better to join a winning team.” His smile was bright and slightly feral. 

Melisandre lifted one elegant eyebrow. “I see the competition is starting early this year.”

“I always play to win.” 

“And you think Brienne will give you the edge you need to finally win the World Championship you've spent so many years failing to achieve?”

Jaime's jaw clenched. “I think everything will come together for us this year.”

Melisandre glanced down at her notes, looked back up, and smiled. “It seems like you're missing one last piece of the puzzle. Once you select someone, you'll be on your fourth race engineer in five years. Do you think that turnover has affected your ability to make it all the way to number one?”

“No,” Jaime said tightly. The ease and charm had drained entirely from him and he had the furious look of a cornered lion with nothing to do but fight. “I think bad luck and bad hiring decisions have been our biggest problems.” 

“You don't think your own driving and copious penalties have had any impact?”

Brienne leaned forward. “I've been a Formula One fan my entire life,” she said before Jaime could speak. “I used to watch Arthur Dayne as a child and I remember how he handled his car. I'm sure you remember his famous White Harbor loss years ago?”

“Who doesn't?” Melisandre said, her eyes narrowed in interest.

“Then you recall how Hightower came around the corner, passed Dayne in an unexpected move down the straightaway. No one thought Hightower was capable of beating Dayne. If you watch that race closely, and I have many times, Dayne's tires were too used up, he'd been on them too long and he tried to block the pass but couldn't get his speed up or his car angle right.”

“Yes, there's been talk of that before. How does all of this relate to Jaime?”

“Last season at White Harbor, Jaime was in Dayne's position – tires too used, Stark coming up hard on him in an objectively faster car at that point in the race.” 

“And Jaime won that race,” Melisandre said, her eyes widening again with understanding.

“Exactly. I don't know what he was thinking of course, I was just an observer then, but I saw right away what should have happened and didn't because of positioning and select use of braking. That was all due to his driving.” 

“Well,” Melisandre said, leaning back and looking pleased, “it looks like you chose your new mechanic well, Jaime.” 

Brienne chanced a look at him, expecting to see him annoyed she'd interrupted or blandly teasing for her using her fan knowledge in his defense, but instead he seemed thunderstruck, as though she'd just appeared next to him out of thin air like some magician's trick. 

“Indeed I did,” he said, his voice soft. He shook himself a little and smiled at Melisandre, a warm, sincere curve of the lips that made his eyes glow in the lights, made Brienne's heart glow inside her. “Indeed I did.”

* * *

The rest of the interview was uneventful, Melisandre asking generic questions about plans for the car launch, expectations of the season, and searching for any bit of news they would let slip. Jaime, relaxed and in control again, answered almost all of them and Brienne was happy to let him, chipping in only when he encouraged her to speak. Once it was all done, Brienne stood quickly and Melisandre hurried to her.

“You were wonderful,” she said, taking Brienne's hands again. Her nails were smooth and red against Brienne's pale, rough skin. “That bit about comparing Jaime to Dayne will be on every racing site for weeks.” 

“Oh,” Brienne said; she felt Jaime watching her again. “Thank you for the interview,” she directed to Melisandre.

“I'd love to talk with just you at some point, get more into being the first woman chief mechanic. It's an important milestone for the sport.” Melisandre leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “All of us ladies in racing are secretly rooting for you.” She squeezed Brienne's hands and turned to Jaime. “Keep this one around, she's the best part about your team.” 

“People keep suggesting that,” he said with a throwaway grin. But when Melisandre bid them farewell, he turned to Brienne, his features pulled tight. “Why did you do that?” he asked. He wasn't angry but he wasn't happy either; there was something dark and wild to him, his muscles tight. 

She frowned. “I'm on your team, Mr. Lannister. It's my job to defend you.” He stared at her, his eyes deep and grasping, and she looked away, afraid to venture too far into them. “It was the truth, anyone could have seen it,” she added hurriedly. “If there's nothing else here, I really should be going. I had plans for today.”

Jaime was quiet for several seconds. “Don't let me keep you,” he finally said, sounding more like himself and when she glanced at him again, the sharp-edged wryness was back in his smile. Brienne relaxed seeing it. “See you Monday, Wrench.” 

Brienne thought of the look in his eyes all weekend and as she was falling asleep Sunday night in clean clothes and with a full stomach, she realized why she couldn't let it go: Jaime had been, in that instant, hopeful – and terrified of it.


	3. January (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Focus,” Jaime exhaled loudly, a reminder he was tired of giving himself around her. Brienne was still annoying and her lips were too big and she disliked him; nothing good would come of imagining anything more. He adjusted his shorts and added extra weight to his sets until he was covered in sweat, breathing hard, and too exhausted to be thinking inappropriate thoughts about Brienne Tarth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished another future chapter in one week instead of two! Some of the upcoming chapters are going to be big emotionally so those will take the full two weeks which means I won't post these finished chapters for two weeks so I don't get backed up later, but here's the next chapter a week early again.

Jaime spent all weekend in a haze. Between drinking, smoking two ill-advised cigarettes, chewing more gum than an adult man should, and staring blearily at his laptop as he followed endless trails trying to find his next race engineer, finally leaving his apartment Monday morning felt like emerging from a strange, smelly chrysalis. Jaime left an extra large tip for his cleaners and then went straight to the gym. When he arrived, already dressed in workout shorts and a Lannister Racing t-shirt, he saw Brienne inside doing pull-ups. 

Brienne, who had haunted him all weekend with her sincerity and her belief. She had defended him without hesitation. He hadn’t had to order her to, or beg her. She’d just done it, because Melisandre had been wrong and she couldn’t let that lie. 

She was using the tallest bar and still she had to have her feet curled up behind her when she lowered herself using her long arms. Her back was to him and he allowed himself just a moment to admire the broad muscles there, the way her biceps went round and tight as she pulled herself up and then how they lengthened letting her body back down. She'd looked nervous under the lights, throwing herself in front of Melisandre's insinuations, but here she looked in total, confident control. She had a nice ass, too, he could see now that she wasn't in a jumpsuit or baggy pants, and her legs were all pale skin and long, shapely muscles. The blood in his head started rushing downward so he tore his eyes away and slammed the door shut and she dropped quickly from the bar. 

“Mr. Lannister,” she said, breathing hard. Her blue eyes shone in her sweaty, blotchy face. “I thought you worked out at night?”

“I thought you did, too,” he said. “Will you at least drop the 'mister' part? It reminds me of my father.”

Brienne pursed her lips but she nodded. “Very well,” she agreed, and he felt buoyed by such an easy win first thing in the morning. “Did you have a nice weekend?” she asked, cautious, and he felt guilty again for how he'd treated her last week. 

“It was a weekend,” he said. “The interview airs tonight.” 

“So soon?” 

“Melisandre wanted to get it out there so she pushed us up to be the first one.” Jaime smiled triumphantly. “You've already helped me beat Robb Stark and we haven't even gotten on the track yet.”

Brienne went lightly red down her neck and looked away. “The track is where it really matters,” she said quietly. 

Jaime rolled one shoulder in a shrug and side-stepped to the mat to bend down and touch his toes, starting his brief stretching routine. He rubbed his hands down his calves to ease the tightness and exhaled slowly, the burn fading away. “Car launch in three weeks. Will we be ready?”

When she didn't answer right away he turned his head and tilted it up – and up, and up – her legs to her face where she was blinking at him and chewing her bottom lip furiously. He stood too quickly and felt slightly dizzy. 

“What? Is something wrong? Is my car okay?” he asked. 

“I'm fine, it's fine.” She was even redder now and it disappeared down beneath her tank top. “I just remembered I need to answer some emails before work about launch preparations. I'll see you later.” 

Brienne turned hard on her heel and hurried for the women's shower, leaving Jaime with the empty gym and his own confusion. She'd clearly not been telling him the truth; even a week in he could tell she was a terrible liar, too dedicated and good-hearted to be as devious as all the other people he knew. For a brief, spiraling moment he considered following her, demanding to know what was really going on, but he might catch her undressing, probably down to her sports bra and panties and even he knew that was wrong, though he felt his cock stir when he imagined her bright and furious eyes when he barged in. As staid as Brienne might be, she wouldn't meekly flee or demure or even throw herself at him. What she would do was stand and push back and get his blood pumping with her stubborn, freckled face, her thick body mostly exposed.

“Focus,” Jaime exhaled loudly, a reminder he was tired of giving himself around her. Brienne was still annoying and her lips were too big and she disliked him; nothing good would come of imagining anything more. He adjusted his shorts and added extra weight to his sets until he was covered in sweat, breathing hard, and too exhausted to be thinking inappropriate thoughts about Brienne Tarth.

* * *

They didn't cross paths again until later that afternoon, when Jaime's uncle Kevan called a meeting in the big warehouse space for the entire Lannister Corp team. Everyone had started last week but Kevan had been on the last leg of his vacation so his welcome to the season speech was today.

Even in the middle of the crowd, Brienne stood out and Jaime pushed his way to stand next to her. She glanced over at him when he arrived, his shoulder lightly brushing hers given the tight quarters. 

“Hope you're ready to go on stage, Wrench. They're going to want to present you,” he murmured and her eyes went big and round. 

“No one told me that,” she hissed. 

“They're not known for being considerate.” 

Brienne pushed her hair back and down, tucking it behind her ears, which only made her awkward features stand out more. “Can't I just stay here and wave?”

“If you pretend your leg is broken.” She looked so nervous and uncomfortable he added impulsively, “I'll go up with you.” 

“Can you do that?”

“I'm Jaime fucking Lannister, Wrench, I can do whatever I want.” He smiled brightly at her and was rewarded with a slight crinkling of her eyes as she smiled a little back. 

The crowd shifted and went quiet as Kevan took the stage, microphone in hand. He was all round curves where Jaime's own father was sharp lines, but they had the same calculating green eyes. “Welcome to the new season, everyone!”

Around Jaime, everyone clapped and cheered, even Brienne. He folded his arms across his chest in silence and she shot him a quick, disapproving look. 

Kevan droned on for awhile about everything good from last season, not even mentioning Jaime's name at all, though he dropped Lancel's several times. Jaime gripped his own upper arms with tighter and tighter fingers. Brienne shifted next to him and he could feel her trying not to watch him and his reaction. Her pity only made him angrier. 

“With all the good we've done,” Kevan said, “Lannister Corp Racing is poised now to have our best season yet. The World Champion Constructor title is in our reach!” The crowd cheered loudly again, Kevan beaming out at them. “We've got mostly the same fantastic crews from last season,” he paused to let them applaud themselves, “and added some new faces to tip us over the edge. There's one in particular I'd like to introduce you to today, our new chief mechanic for car number 8, the first female chief mechanic in Formula One history, hired by Twyin Lannister himself,” Jaime ground his teeth, “Brienne Tarth! Brienne, come on up here!”

She looked to Jaime again and he nodded, gesturing for her to precede him. He followed in her good-sized wake and watched the faces as he walked by, noting how the women were whooping and beaming at her, many of his crew were doing the same, and almost everyone else watched with suspicion or downright derision. When he looked up at Kevan, his uncle was practically salivating as she walked up, though Jaime knew it had nothing to do with Brienne's looks or skills, but what she would do for the company's reputation and publicity. Jaime wanted to drag her from the room back to her shop on Tarth and leave her there with her dreams and her innocence. But she was already on stage and they'd signed a contract and he could only be at her side to shield her from the worst of it. 

Kevan finally noticed Jaime had come all the way on stage with her and he lowered his microphone while Brienne waved shyly at the crowd as the applause died down. 

“What are you doing?” Kevan whispered furiously. 

“She is _my_ Chief Mechanic,” Jaime said loudly enough for the room to hear. The last applause ceased abruptly. “And I was worried you'd forgotten my name since I hadn't heard you say it once, dear uncle.”

There were a few laughs, the loudest from Bronn. Kevan narrowed his eyes but he plastered a fake smile on his face and spoke into the microphone again. “Who could forget you, Jaime? What year is this in your second try at F1, nephew?”

“Five long, long years as part of your team, uncle.” He saw Brienne watching them with wide, concerned eyes. “We're not here to talk about me, though.”

“That's a first.” The room erupted in laughter and Jaime forced himself to join them, although what he really wanted was to shove Kevan off of the stage and hope his uncle broke several somethings when he hit the floor. “But my nephew is right, today we wanted to introduce Brienne and give her a chance to say a few words.” 

“I really couldn't,” she demurred, her cheeks going as red as the Lannister Corp colors. 

Kevan forced his microphone into her hands. “Come on, the ladies are waiting.” 

Brienne looked helplessly at Jaime and he frowned. “Just say a few words,” he said quietly. “Anything at all and be done with it.”

She brought the microphone too close to her lips and when she spoke it was loud and echoed in the big room and everyone flinched. “Sorry,” she said, modulating her voice. “Thank you for the opportunity.” She started to lower the microphone and Jaime gave her a quick roll of his hand, indicating she should say something else. She was definitely going to need some PR training soon. 

“Um, I look forward to working with you all and helping make this the best season ever,” she added, and the room applauded at the rote pablum. But Brienne was smiling and so was Kevan as he took the microphone back. 

“Wonderful, thank you, Brienne. Dear friend of the Lannister Corp, Melisandre Houten, interviewed Brienne, Tywin, and our drivers for her 'Meet the Team' show and that is airing tonight on WSN! We'll make sure everyone gets home for the repeat viewing at least.” The crowd laughed knowingly. “I won't take up much more of your time today. I just have two last reminders: we'll start our regular weekly recap meetings after the first preseason race, and don't forget our big car launch after-party in two weeks. Someone needs to keep Amory from getting into the wine again, eh, Lorch?” Jaime rolled his eyes at the friendly hooting and laughter that accompanied it. Amory Lorch was one of his father's men, mediocre at his job with an ego that outstripped his skills and an appetite that outstripped anyone else's in Lannister Corp. “Good man, good man,” Kevan was saying. “Alright everyone, back to work. What do we say at Lannister Corp?”

“Hear us roar!” the crowd shouted back. Jaime glanced at Brienne, who'd remained onstage with him and Kevan. Her face was guarded but her eyes were shining as she looked out over the crowd. He scanned the crowd, too, saw a few men from Lancel's pit talking quietly with Martyn, their gazes flitting like nervous birds to Brienne and away again, and he resisted jumping down from the stage and proactively banging their heads together. Brienne had said she could handle it and he had bigger problems right now than a handful of gossiping douchebags. 

But he kept an eye on her as she tromped down the stairs and re-joined his team, receiving backpats and good-natured ribbing from them as they all headed back to the garage to work, Martyn lingering at the edge in silence.

* * *

As promised, Brienne and the crew stayed late into the evening working hard on getting ready for car launch, but Sandor dropped her off at her apartment with enough time to take a shower and get some food before she collapsed on her small couch and tucked her feet up under her. She'd texted her father earlier to let him know about the interview and he'd sent her fifty texts as he watched the initial showing, telling her how good she looked, how smart her answers were, how much he missed her but how happy he was she was there. Brienne had read the messages in the stall of the bathroom and barely held back tears.

Now, alone in the dark with just the quiet noise of the pre-show commercials turned low, Brienne wished more than ever he – or anyone – were here with her. Loneliness had been a companion but never a problem on Tarth. Islanders were fiercely protective independents, happy to take care of each other in a pinch and then leave each other alone when help was no longer needed, but there were always people nearby and Brienne had known their familiar faces her whole life, even if she'd had few she would call friend. And her father had been there for her and Galladon since her mother had died; even with his rotating girlfriends he was as constant and trusted a presence in her life as the Evenstar had been to her seafaring ancestors. Here in King's Landing, she could barely see the stars. Here, there were more people but they all felt further away, strangers that looked at her and saw only a freakishly tall, ugly woman in a sport that that barely acknowledged women existed as more than sexy props. She hadn't missed the skeptical, condescending stares from the vast majority of the crowded room at Lannister Corp earlier that day, even though they were, supposedly, all one team. She was dreading the car launch afterparty, and the coming race days when her crew would start colliding with the other teams'. Especially Griffin's. 

“It will be fine,” she said to her empty apartment, and tried to distract herself by reading through her texts again. She noticed the last one she'd sent to Jaime, her drunken 'fuck you' that he'd shrugged off with surprising good humor that was even more surprising given the week that had followed. They'd held to a sort of uneasy truce today, mostly because they'd barely spoken except for the team meeting. Even after she'd hurried from the gym, flustered like some groupie by the sight of his muscled body going through routine stretches, he had gone up on stage with her to provide support. He'd hovered a bit the rest of the afternoon as they worked, and every time she looked at him he was watching her, though every time she caught him he only smirked and looked away. 

For a fleeting moment she considered calling him, and then shook her head at herself. He'd done more of these interviews than any racer alive given his long career and notoriety; what would he care about her first one? He'd likely just make fun of her for making a big deal out of it and she couldn't take that tonight. 

The familiar music of the show started and Brienne gripped her hands together tightly half in front of her face, barely able to look at herself as the interview began. But as she watched over the ridges of her knuckles, she had to admit her eyes did look nice with the eyeliner, distracting the viewer at least a little from how ungainly and uncomfortable she looked in the chair, or how big her hands were, or why on earth she gestured so much when she had so little to say. At least she didn't dwarf Jaime. He looked collected and handsome, though she noticed again the tension in his strong hands, the way he shifted in his seat at questions he didn't like, and the strange look he'd given her after her comparison between him and Dayne. 

Half an hour later the interview mercifully ended and her phone lit up with messages. One from Podrick that said 'YOU DID GREAT!!!!' followed by an emoji of a corny-looking man throwing confetti; two from Bronn that said 'good interview Chief' and 'Dayne should have won that race, good call' that made her smile; another from her father that said 'I watched the repeat viewing! And recorded it too! We're getting a group together to watch it tomorrow!'; and a last, unexpected, message from Jaime, which she read almost tentatively. 'You did great' it said, 'made me look good' followed by a winking emoji. She blinked at it, uncertain how to take the last part when a follow-up message from him popped up as though he'd felt her confusion from miles away. 'I mean your story. You looked ok.' 

“Thanks?” she said out loud to her phone. 

It flashed again, another message from Jaime. 'You looked good. Blue is a good color on you.'

Brienne flushed and texted a quick 'thank you' response to all three of her coworkers before calling her father. He answered on the second ring. 

“Darling!” She winced a little as his loud voice echoed over the line. “I saw your interview! Did you get my messages?”

“I did. I can't believe you stayed up to watch it again. You really think it was okay?”

“Are you kidding? It was fantastic. You looked so poised, and that thing about Dayne, that was so smart.” Brienne smiled softly at the floor. “I'm glad you called, I didn't want to bother you while you were still settling in but I'm really curious about how it's going.”

“It's harder than I expected,” she admitted. “But the crew is solid and they listen to me.”

“They'd be fools not to.”

Or just like most other men she'd met in her life, she thought. “We're preparing for car launch right now. It's a little over two weeks away.”

“Argella's going to come over and help me watch it online.”

Argella was their neighbor's daughter, a young whiz with technology who'd also helped Brienne's father with his new cell phone. “Tell her I said hi.”

“I will. When can you send me pictures of the car? Everyone's asking.”

“Not until launch day. They're very particular about what can and can't be shared. I'll find some time to take pictures of the outside of the building, though, and my desk.”

“I'd like that.” There was a brief pause and then he asked, “how has it been working with Jaime Lannister?”

Tumultuous, was her first thought. Aggravating. Annoying. An hourly roulette of whether he'd be nice to her or not. But also inspiring, the way he committed to the details. Exhilarating, when he took one of her suggestions after a long argument. And in those moments when their shared admiration of the car bound them together, it was the closest she'd ever been to feeling truly understood by someone other than her father. 

“Complicated,” was what she told her dad now. 

“Mm,” he grunted. “Remember he's just the driver. You're the chief mechanic, you own that car.”

The drivers she'd worked for had been like that in F3, but that was not how Jaime operated at all. His car was like an extension of him, a child, or a lover perhaps. Brienne remembered the way he'd drawn his fingers down the length of her car on Tarth, and the hairs on her arm stood up. “I have another early day tomorrow, I should get going,” she said, and a yawn cracked her mouth wide as though she'd planned it. 

“Are you eating well? Getting enough sleep?”

“I'm doing fine, Dad, I promise. It's only been a week.”

“I know what the job is like, Brienne, what the demands of it are. You have to treat your body like any athlete – enough sleep, healthy food, exercise.”

“I'm getting plenty of exercise, they have a gym onsite.”

“Drink lots of water.”

“Dad,” she said with a laugh. “Stop. I can take care of myself.”

“You may be chief mechanic to them but you're still my daughter,” he said, his voice gruff and warm with love, and Brienne closed her eyes as though darkness would hold it closer. “Anyway,” he continued, “go get some sleep.”

“Good night, Dad.”

“Good night, darling. Call any time.”

She smiled again but as soon as she hung up, the emptiness of her apartment swarmed over her and took her smile with it.

* * *

Tuesday morning, there was no one else in the gym the entire time she was there, and when she walked into the offices a few of the engineers she'd never even talked to before greeted her, but there was no tart “morning, Wrench,” from Jaime and it irritated her that she felt its absence.

When she and the crew met to plan for their first pit stop training sessions, Podrick greeted her with a smile and a chocolate donut that looked like a tire. 

“You were a-awesome,” he said cheerfully. “I told my m-mum I worked with you and sh-she wanted an autograph.” 

Brienne's laugh ceased abruptly when he presented her with a printout of a screen capture from the interview to sign. “Oh gods,” she murmured covering her face with her hands. He'd got one where she was leaning forward slightly, one big hand waving to the side, looking like she was going to fight Melisandre. “Why on earth did you pick this shot?”

“Y-y-you look like a warrior. I like that ab-bout you.” He ducked his head, smiling shyly and she wanted suddenly to give him a hug. Instead she took the picture, asked for his mom's name, and signed it. 

Bronn and the others filtered over, most of them congratulating her, although she could feel Martyn's disdain when he uttered, just loud enough he had to know she would hear, “she only got the interview because she's a girl.” 

“And you're only here because you're a Lannister,” Bronn said cheerfully. “Now shut the fuck up and get the test room ready. All by yourself,” he added when Willem started off with him. “There's a good lad. The rest of you go check your email and take a piss, we'll meet in the test space in ten.” When they'd filtered off, he turned to Brienne. “What's your plan, Chief?”

“My plan?”

“For Martyn. He doesn't like you.”

“I'm aware of that,” she said dryly. “My plan is to do my job and make sure he does his. I don't need to be liked.”

“Good, because he's not the only one who doesn't,” Bronn said, blunt as usual. 

“You don't have to like me, either.”

“Oh I like you fine,” Bronn said, “and so do most of the crew. Willem might like you better if it weren't for his cunt of a brother.” Brienne had ceased being surprised by Bronn's language and harsh judgments two days into working with him. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Lancel's crew talks pretty loud, though, and Martyn's listening. So are some of the engineers.”

“Talking doesn't bother me,” Brienne said softly. She'd heard enough taunts her whole life that she couldn't remember the last time someone had come up with something original. If she'd let those words stop her, she would have become a cave-dwelling recluse on Tarth years ago. “I just want everyone to work hard, I don't care if they call me names when they do it.”

Bronn considered her, and if he were some other person she might have said he looked sad. “You deserve better than that,” he said simply and shrugged, “but it's your life. I'm here if you need me to knock some courtesy into someone.” 

“Thank you.” Brienne offered a quick, closed-mouth smile. “I need to go check email.” She hesitated and then asked as casually as she could, “is Lannister here today?”

“Which one?” he said with a barking laugh. “Can't take a shit without running into a Lannister here. But assuming you mean Jaime Lannister, I haven't seen him. The weeks before car launch the drivers are usually off getting exams and filming promotions and other poncy shit, he shouldn't be here much the next couple of weeks, if we're lucky. Pain in the ass always thinks he has better opinions about his car's engine than the actual mechanics.” 

They started walking towards the cubicles together. “In my experience that's unusual.”

“It is. Unusual and damned annoying. I don't sit in the car and tell him how to drive, do I?”

Brienne coughed. Bronn had in fact told him exactly how to drive last week when they were talking about the track at Harrenhal and why they needed so many soft compound tires. “You take those corners like shit on the hards. If you had softs you could start your turn later,” Bronn had said.

“I start my turn when I need to and use the hard braking to refill the KERS.”

“But the softs would reduce the need for braking at all.”

“I'm sorry, how many years of driving experience do you have again?” Jaime had said and Bronn had grimaced but stopped arguing. 

Bronn glanced at Brienne now and chuckled. “Your non-agreement is noted,” he said. “Me and Lannister go way back, even before the accident.”

“Really? You were on his team then?”

“I was on Aerys'.”

“Oh.” She stared down at the boring beige carpet. “That must have been wonderful, working for Aerys before...before.” 

Bronn snorted. “You only say that because you never met him in person. I didn't talk to him much, I was just a tire man back then. He didn't deign to talk to us except to yell at us for not going fast enough. But even then Lannister wanted to know what was happening at every level, though he was a lot more of a shit about it.”

“That's hard to imagine,” Brienne muttered and Bronn laughed loudly. 

“Age has made him bearable. Though not to you, I suppose.”

“No, not to me.”

“Mm.” Bronn halted at the entrance to his own cubicle a row over from hers. “My advice is you give him twice as much crap as he gives you until he realizes what an idiot he's being.”

“I don't know. I don't have your history with him. I've been here less than a month.”

Bronn shrugged. “What do you care? He's not the one who signs your paychecks.”

Brienne thought of cold-eyed Tywin Lannister and grimaced. “Does Tywin even pay attention to what we're doing?”

“Only that we're winning. Mostly he's Jaime's problem, thank the Seven for that.” 

Brienne moved around to her own cubicle and stared at Bronn's head bent over his laptop, using two fingers to hunt-and-peck type. Aerys had been _his_ driver once upon a time, and rude or not, when you worked for a team that team became your life as long as you were with them. But here he was now with Jaime, even when the specter that Jaime had purposefully caused Aerys' accident had never been totally exorcised. How did he look Jaime in the face every day, knowing what might be true and could never be proven except by Jaime himself? How was she going to do it? “Bronn,” she said, unable to swallow back the question, needing to hear his answer. She waited until he looked up. “Do you think he did it on purpose? The crash?”

Bronn's face shuttered, his brown eyes hardening. “You're new so I'll let that go, but if I find out you're asking anyone else that question, you'll discover just how much influence I have.”

Swallowing hard, Brienne nodded and sat down at her laptop, her face hot, Bronn's non-answer hovering between them.

* * *

The engineers were finalizing the last details before she and the team could finally put the car together for launch, so they spent the rest of the week in a blur of learning the complicated ballet of pit stops in preparation for the winter testing. Brienne had worked pits before, but every team had their own nuances, and it was those nuances where time would be gained or lost. Bronn kept her at a distance for a day or two, but the time crunch and the nature of their work together had him bringing her dinner by the middle of the week when she didn't have time to even leave the garage.

They slotted her into every role so she could see how they worked, had her taking off and putting on tires for so many hours Wednesday afternoon that she could barely lift her arms on Thursday so they put her on front jack until her back and shoulders were tight and her legs ached from standing. Every night she stayed up late catching up on what everyone else already knew from years of experience, and she was up early every morning to study tracks, past Lannister pits and races, and the nuances of every rule and regulation. 

It wasn't just her work and her studying that kept her busy. Melisandre had been right that they played the interview clip everywhere; for a few days Podrick sent her links to blog posts debating whether what Brienne had said was even true, until she'd had to firmly tell him she didn't want to read anything else about herself. Her dad's forwards had been even worse. He didn't even read most of them first, just emailed her links whenever he found her name and after the third one insulting her looks and her lack of experience she auto-deleted anything he sent. The next day he sent her an email with 'SORRY!!!!!' in the subject line, swearing he had no idea those men were saying 'such terrible, untrue things.' On top of that was a flood of media requests from networks and newspapers all over Westeros and beyond. Brienne ignored every one, putting up an out of office notice that all questions should go to their communications team instead. 

The only person it seemed she didn't hear from was Jaime. He was never anywhere she was and she was too busy to tell if he was even in the offices at all. 

By Friday afternoon Brienne was weary and looking forward to a quiet weekend, likely the last one she'd have until the mid-season break. When she entered the garage for their final day of pit work, Bronn assigned her to the pneumatic tool. It was like a barely controlled bomb in her hands when she tested it before using it on the wheel. 

“This has more power than I've used before,” she said.

“Every team has their own version. More air means more speed, just have to be strong enough to hold onto it,” Bronn explained. 

“Not a job for a woman,” Martyn said. He was in charge of the pneumatic on the right front tire. 

“I can do it,” Brienne said through clenched teeth. “Put the tire on.” 

Martyn threw it on and Brienne jammed the pneumatic gun against the wheel nuts and held on as it whirred them into place in less than a second. She jerked the tool back off again and then smiled at Martyn, feeling almost feral in her success. He glared down at her. 

“Now do it ten times,” he demanded. 

They practiced taking the wheel on and off over and over, ten and then twenty and then thirty times in a row until her hands were all aching tendons and tender blisters, her knees sure to be purpled with bruises in the morning from pressing into the concrete, and Martyn was sweating and red-faced. 

“That's enough,” Bronn barked as Martyn went to grab the tire yet again. “I think she's got it.” 

The air gun clattered to the ground from Brienne's hands and she stood slowly from where she'd been alternating crouching and kneeling, her back screaming at her. She tried not to groan and instead exhaled in short puffs through her nose. Bronn looked her over and then addressed the team. “Next week is build week so get your useless asses out of here and cleaned up. I want to see you at dawn on Monday.”

Brienne let everyone else leave first before allowing herself a loud, pained moan when she and Bronn were alone in the room. He shook his head.

“Sounds like you should go home and take a hot shower.”

“That sounds amazing,” she sighed. “But I have to check on build progress.” 

“Build progress will wait. Shower first, Doctor Bronn's orders.”

She snorted but her body was like one giant, clenched muscle and even that hurt. “Fine,” she said. “Shower first.” 

Brienne walked stiffly back to her desk and packed up her things to take them home. It was quiet in the offices, almost everyone either in the engineering and test rooms this early in the evening or gone home themselves to relax for one of the last Friday nights they'd have free. Sandor sent her a response saying he'd be there in a bit, and she headed for the front door to wait in the cool, early evening air. It never got too cold in King's Landing, especially inland where it was more protected from the sea winds, though she missed the taste of salt on the air, still half-expecting it every time she stepped outside. 

She rolled her neck in a slow circle and massaged her own shoulder with weakened hands, not wanting to tighten up any more than she already was. The doors opened behind her and whoever it was stopped in silence. Her neck itched under the weight of a heavy stare. Brienne wasn't surprised to see Martyn when she looked, hands on his hips and his face twisted and ugly with anger. The two men from Lancel's crew that stood just behind him were unexpected though. They were all still dressed in their jumpsuits, which meant they'd probably followed her out here. The tense muscles she'd just released in her neck went steel again.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply. 

“You shouldn't be here,” Martyn said. 

Brienne took a long, slow breath, mostly to calm herself. “I'm just waiting for a ride.”

He sneered. “I mean with Lannister Corp. A woman with no experience and no connections? You must have fucked _somebody_ to get this job.” 

“I'm here because I'm a great mechanic.” She flexed her fingers slowly at her side. 

“That's not what I heard,” one of Lancel's lackeys leered. He had thin brown hair pulled back in a short ponytail and a scraggly beard. 

“Then you heard wrong,” Brienne said firmly. She'd had this same conversation when she'd first joined Griffin's team, though there it had happened in the garage, where there'd been more people and she hadn't been worn down and aching. Though she'd only been rising to his challenge, their afternoon practice had filled Martyn with jagged edges, pushing at the boundaries of his skin like rocks ready to tear open boats too near the shore. She glanced around casually, found the area quiet and empty and wasn't sure anyone would even hear her if she yelled. If she needed to punch her way out of this, she'd have to do it alone. 

“Look at her, no one would fuck her anyway.” That was the other Lancel crew member, an older, bald man with tattoos creeping out from under his sleeves and collar. 

“Is it my height or my shape or my face that makes me particularly unfuckable?” Brienne asked, pleased with how disaffected her tone was. She had learned early the best way to disarm her bullies was to use their weapons against herself, though sometimes the cut was deeper when she was wielding the sword on her own tender skin. 

They hesitated, and she took the opening of their uncertainty to straighten to her full height. The three men tensed. 

“Bronn's not here to defend you,” Martyn hissed. 

“I don't need help defending myself. You think I haven't met dozens of men like you, all too scared and weak to not be intimidated by a girl being as good or better than them? I bet you wouldn't even fight me on your own.”

Martyn stepped nearer and time slowed down, her senses sharpening so she could see the sweat beading at his hairline, hear the crack of Baldy's knuckles, the distant hum of the highway. Brienne clenched her hands into fists at her side, balanced lightly on the balls of her feet. 

“You think you're better than me?” Martyn asked in a low, furious tone.

She briefly considered her answer and decided she had little choice but to see this through if she weren't going to give him ground, and she'd frankly rather get beat in a fight than let him think he'd cowed her. She could use Martyn as a shield from the other two if they tried to all attack her at once, but they looked less eager to join him than they had a moment before. It seemed bitterly fitting that all the macho posturing she'd talked her way out of in the past would finally come to blows on Jaime Lannister's team. “I do.” 

The front door banged open just as Martyn started to move and he stumbled to a halt, his hands halfway up, grabbing empty air. Brienne glanced past him and the others and saw Jaime there, eyes widening briefly. 

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, taking them all in. He shoved in between Lancel's two men to stand just off Martyn's shoulder, his gaze on Brienne. 

It was Martyn who answered him. “No.”

“Because it looks like this might be my kind of dance, and Tarth doesn't seem to have a partner.” Jaime's voice was light, but it promised violence. 

“Just working out some things,” Martyn said, stepping back and away from them both. He never stopped glaring at her, his anger boiling up in lines around his eyes and all along his forehead. “We're done for now.” He barely even looked at Jaime as he turned and pulled the door open again, Baldy and Scraggly leaving with him. When the door shut behind them and it was just her and Jaime in the deepening twilight, Brienne realized she was trembling slightly as the adrenaline receded and she sat down heavily on the curb before her tired legs gave way. 

The last time Brienne had been in a fight was the year after Galladon died. The boys had been mad at her because she'd beaten them so often at karting, and she'd just been mad because the world had taken away almost every person she'd ever loved. It had felt good letting all of it go with her fists, though the broken nose hadn't helped her looks. When she came home covered in bruises and blood her dad had panicked and pulled her from karting and she never officially competed again, a seething ache that had dulled with time and her mechanic work.

She felt Jaime's stare but couldn't meet it, instead focusing on her knees and willing them to be still. Time picked up again, whirring too fast for her to catch hold.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded. 

“Nothing,” she muttered. She'd been through enough moments like this before that she knew telling anyone about it only made things worse. 

“Looked pretty tense for nothing.”

“Like Martyn said, we were just working out our differences.” Jaime stood in front of her and she stared at his calves, caught sight of the tips of his fingers as he drummed them against his thigh. 

“You have to tell me if he does something,” Jaime said quietly. “He's Kevan's son so I can only do so much without any official report.” 

Brienne's head shot up, and she was briefly surprised by the concern in Jaime's eyes. “Don't tell anyone. Please,” she added when he started to speak. “They were just dumb threats.”

“He looked like he was about to swing at you.”

She gestured briefly at herself. “Do I look like I can't take a hit?”

Jaime wasn't amused. “He can't just get away with attacking other team members.”

“Haven't _you_ hit team members?”

“Not for a long time,” he muttered. 

“Don't do this just because I'm a woman.” 

“You stubborn-” Jaime exhaled loud through his nose. “Why do you antagonize me?”

“Antagonize _you_? You can't even call me by my name.”

“You can't even accept a little help when you've been threatened.”

“Nothing happened. What do you think they're going to do if I report it? His story backed by his two friends against mine with no evidence? You think that will help me fit in better, if I make a big deal when he didn't even swing at me?” 

“I'd back you up.” Jaime lifted his chin and looked every inch the rich, arrogant driver he was. 

“Because your reputation is so stellar.” His whole body tensed and he crossed his arms over his chest, briefly distracting her with the round hill of his biceps under his t-shirt. She wished he would leave. She wished he would comfort her. She cursed herself for her own weakness. “He won't get away with it entirely,” she said, hearing the slow drawl in her own voice as the week's ferocious activity caught up to her. “I'll talk to Bronn about it; I know he'll believe me and he can apply some pressure without anything having to be official.”

Jaime grunted and sat down next to her on the curb. She watched him from the corner of her eye, noticed the thicker growth of beard on his face, his long and shaggy hair. He patted his pockets, sighed, and pulled out a stick of gum. He looked as tired as she was.

“You should practice your pit stops,” she blurted. 

He stopped with the gum halfway to his mouth, like a scene from a sitcom. “Excuse me?”

“Your pit stops.” Her cheeks were hot but she pressed on. “I've been studying them this week, and we've been practicing in the garage. You don't stop where the team is. They lose half a second, easy, just moving back into position with the tires.” 

“So it's my fault we can't get below three seconds?” 

“It doesn't help,” she said defensively. 

Jaime sighed and popped the gum in his mouth. “It's fucking annoying how often you're right.”

“You hired me to help you, Mr-.” She pursed her lips. “Lannister.” 

“My father hired you, I just recruited you.” His eyes were hard and faraway in the dim evening light. 

“You weren't always on this team,” she said, tentative. “Did he recruit you?” 

“I'm a Lannister,” he said, as though it answered her question. Brienne frowned at him and he smiled, brief but charming, a brisk wind blowing away any further probing. “You were ready to throw down when I opened the door.”

She blinked warily. “Yes.”

“Your stance is pretty good. You've had training.”

They were at the edge of the building's lights and the night was getting darker around them, the shadows compelling more from her than she usually gave, the exhaustion lowering her guard. “When I was first trying to get into F3 my dad made me take classes since I'd be traveling and he was worried about me. Then I kept at them for a few years longer because...I liked them.” What she'd liked was how it made her body feel powerful and in control and not just at the whim of her too-long limbs, though she couldn't bring herself to share that with him. 

“Have you had to fight anyone?” His eyes were intense on hers, greedy for her secrets; a gravitational pull that seemed almost impossible to refuse. A beam of bright light cut between them before streaking over her face and she winced and looked away. Sandor's car pulled to a stop in front of them and the passenger side window rolled down. 

“I'm only driving her,” he announced, before rolling the window back up. 

Jaime stood smoothly while Brienne struggled to her feet, ignoring his proffered hand. “I can do it,” she muttered. 

“You're moving like a ninety year old in a twenty-something's body. You're sure he didn't hit you?”

Brienne rolled her eyes. “I've just put in a week's worth of hard physical labor, you should try it some time.” 

He shifted closer to her, eyes bright. “You think I don't get physical?” he asked and she blushed, looking away. 

The passenger window rolled down again. “You coming or what?”

“Yes, sorry,” she pulled open the door to the back and slid in. 

“Hey, Wrench,” Jaime said, holding the door open to keep her from closing it. “If you do ever need someone to back you up, you can always tag me in.” She nodded a little and he let her pull the door closed in silence.


	4. February (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Restless, miserable, and drunker than he first thought, Jaime pushed his way through the crowd to where Brienne and Tyrion were still together talking animatedly. 
> 
> “Wrench!” Jaime roared as he strode up, and they lifted their heads in perfect synchronization, though the resemblance stopped there. Tyrion looked amused and curious while Brienne looked both mad and nervous. 
> 
> “My name-”
> 
> “I know your fucking name.” She glared at him and her body tensed under her stupid dress; a warrior readying for battle in flimsy, revealing armor. She looked fragile wrapped in just the simple cloth; didn't she know it wouldn't protect her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A pause here to thank BrynnMcK (again, some more) for her help in this chapter in particular. It was quite different the first time I wrote it and she was smart enough to realize it wasn't right. She spent the beginning of this week doing the same for a future chapter I'm working on and so she needs to be heralded for her continued amazing support. Thank you all for your support of this fic as well! I was so worried no one was going to want to read a story about racing. :)

The last week before launch passed too quickly to get her hands around more than flashes of it. There were long hours bent over building an entirely new car on top of the old chassis; early morning meetings where they argued with the engineers about introducing yet another new change; and too many trips to the vending machine for sugar breaks. 

“Will they start the car?” she asked Bronn Wednesday night as they both shoved down small powdered donuts during a brief break. 

“Your guess is as good as mine, but it has to at least look like they could,” he'd said with a shrug. He grimaced at his donut and threw it in the trash. His goatee was dusted white with powder. “Back to work.”

At the edges of the moments sliding one into the next was Martyn's shadow. He didn't threaten her again, talked to her only when he couldn't avoid it otherwise, but she turned more than once to find him staring balefully at her from across the room. 

“Everything good?” Bronn asked Friday morning, wiping his hands with the last clean rag in the garage. He wiggled his fingers at Martyn and the other man turned away. 

She hadn't told Bronn about what had happened between her and Martyn the week prior in the hope it would all just blow over in the storm of activity. “It's fine,” she said blithely, picking up a wrench and thinking of Jaime. 

As Bronn had hoped, she didn't see Jaime the entire week, not even in the gym. The light to his office was dark every time she had a minute to look, though those minutes disappeared entirely by Thursday. She left at ten one night, midnight the next, Sandor answering her call no matter when she made it. He wasn't cheerful, but he didn't complain any more than usual, and when she fell asleep in the backseat on the way home on Friday, he didn't even say anything about the drool she left on the headrest. 

Car launch day had her up with the sun even though the actual event wouldn't start until later that afternoon. They'd timed it to begin immediately after the Starks' was over in order to eat up any extra news cycles, and she and the team had a few last adjustments to make before the car was transported onsite. The threat of the Starks having a better car launch drove the entire Lannister Corp team more effectively than any punishment or reward. The teams had a long history as foils for each other – the serious, stodgy Northmen against the wealthier, flashier southern Lannisters – but Brienne hadn't realized how much that competition had seeped into the very foundation of the building until by the end of the week whenever someone even mentioned the Starks she found herself grumbling along with everyone else, though she'd happily cheered for Stark drivers in the past, including Robb. 

When Brienne stepped out of her apartment Saturday morning, Sandor had an unexpected gift of coffee for her, though as usual he got into the car without opening her door. So today was special, but not too special, apparently. 

“Will you be going to the launch?” she asked as he drove through the quiet Saturday morning streets. 

“No.”

“Don't you want to see the new car?”

“No.” 

“What about the after party, are you going to that?”

“No.” 

Brienne took a sip of the coffee and gasped at the strength of it. “Do you even like Formula racing?”

Sandor's eyes flickered up to hers and then back down to the road. “No.” 

She shook her head and stared out the window, watched a young girl climbing into a big pick-up with her dad in front of a diner. The loneliness that work had briefly subsumed burst free again, a deep ache of missing her father, her small place on Tarth, the weathered face of the waitress at her favorite hole-in-the-wall fish restaurant. Jaime's provoking barbs. 

Brienne jerked her head back. _I don't miss Jaime_, she protested to herself. _I just miss when the work wasn't so all-consuming._

If she spent most of that Saturday waiting to hear his voice, certain he would finally be back today, that was just eagerness for the launch, for sharing with her car's driver what she and the crew had been working so hard on. 

But Jaime never showed up and by the time they were manually rolling the car into the transport truck her stomach was in too many knots to care. Brienne moved from tire to tire once the car had been settled, making sure nothing was scratched or knocked off, that the wheels were set in place and locked down, that the steering wheel was firmly attached. Bronn stood at the entrance and watched her. 

“Didn't you just help roll this thing up here yourself? It's fine.”

“I have to be sure,” she said, distracted. Was that a smudge over one of the sponsor's logos? She licked her thumb and rubbed it off, like a mother to her dirty child's face. 

“It's fine,” he repeated. “We've gotta get going, it's going to take you twice as long to get it back off here and onto the stage.

Brienne pressed her hand to the car's side, not wanting to leave it even for what was the shortest transport of the entire season. She turned her back to Bronn and leaned down as though she was looking at something in the cockpit and whispered, “safe journey” to the car before standing and hurrying out. 

“Did you talk to the car?” he asked her as she strode by. Brienne flushed and ignored him. “You're as bad as Lannister,” he groused. 

They beat the transport to the small arena they were renting for the launch and Brienne had time to change into her official Lannister Corp Racing Team red and gold jumpsuit before she rushed to check over the car one more time – every piece was still in place and there were no new dirt spots – and help roll it again off the truck and to a small dais in the basement. 

“So what's the plan exactly?” she asked Bronn as they watched the arena crew remove the ramp and start tethering the car down with cables hidden with clever lighting and shadows. 

“Who cares? My job was just to get it here and to clap and wave when they do their bullshit 'here's the pit crew none of you give a shit about' moment.” 

They filtered out with the rest of the crew to their designated area off the side of the stage, and Brienne looked all around with wide eyes as the audience settled, chattering excitedly. The arena had been transformed into the perfect picture of Lannister Corp elegance. There was a stage at one end and jutting out perpendicular from it into the crowd was a longer stage that looked like a car-sized catwalk. People wandered and shook hands around it, journalists taking pictures and fighting for the best positions, and it reminded her of a pier at home, the ocean waves eddying back and forth. The back of the main stage had a huge screen that had the Lannister Corp Racing logo on it: a roaring lion's head in gold. The last touch were rich red curtains on either side of the screen hiding the backstage area from the audience's sight. Brienne's breath quickened as the lights dimmed and the audience went quiet in anticipation. 

The plan, it turned out, was five minutes of Tywin welcoming everyone to Lannister Corp's fiftieth car launch, then half an hour listening to Kevan give an exhaustive history of Lannister cars and engines accompanied by video and pictures on the big screen while Brienne shifted in the uncomfortable folding seats they'd set up for the pit crews and tried not to look around too much for Jaime. He hadn't even come down to see what his car looked like and she was starting to worry something had happened to him since she'd left him at the curb. She was about to lean over to Bronn to ask him where Jaime was when Kevan said, “before we get a look at what you all really care about,” there was scattered laughter from the audience, “I want to introduce our drivers for this year. Come out here, gentlemen!”

Unlike the pit crew, Lancel and Jaime were in dark, tailored suits, and though the suits matched, the men couldn't have looked more different in them. Lancel looked handsome enough, his blond hair slicked back, his smoothly shaven face split with a wide, charming smile. The suit was tailored to him but he moved awkwardly in it, tugging at his buttoned collar. If he was like a well-dressed and perhaps slightly smarmy Maiden's page, then Jaime was the tempting golden demon that tried to lure young women away.

Jaime's suit moved with him, pleasantly tight across his broad shoulders and snug around his muscular thighs. He'd cut his hair since she'd seen him last, cropped close but still stylishly messy, and he'd shaved off his stubble to match Lancel's clean-cheeked look, although where Lancel looked younger and more innocent, Jaime's jaw seemed almost violently sharp without the shadow or a smile to soften it. Jaime glared at the audience as they applauded him and Lancel, and he scanned the pit crew on the opposite side briefly before looking their way. His eyes found hers almost immediately and Brienne held her breath until he gave her his familiar smirk before moving on. She exhaled slowly, her heart beating as fast as the audience's applause. 

“It's time for the real star of the show,” Kevan said and the lights in the arena dimmed, leaving only a few bright red spotlights aimed towards the middle of the long stage. Pulsing music thrummed loudly through her body and smoke machines went off on the floor, long white arms reaching out and curling around the edge of the stage. “This year's Lannister Corp Racing Formula One vehicle!” Kevan shouted. 

A circular hole opened in the middle of the stage and the car slowly peeked over the edge of it, lifted from below on its dais while the lights swooped crazily, joined by gold flashes synchronized with the drumbeats and a sea of balloons released from above into the audience. The audience cheered wildly, everyone leaping to their feet and Brienne and the pit crew stood with them. She'd seen all types of car launches, from the smaller companies just debuting at preseason runs to Sunspear Motors and their penchant for outdoor, fireworks-filled extravaganzas, but knowing what had gone into getting the car here today, Brienne hadn't realized both how much and how little this meant. 

“Balloons,” Bronn said, leaning past Brienne to talk to Podrick. “I told you it'd be fucking balloons this year. You owe me fifty.” 

Podrick shrugged and when he met Brienne's furrowed stare he grinned. “I-I bet it w-would be confetti.”

Jaime was staring at her again and Brienne felt her cheeks redden when he directed his applause towards her and the crew. 

The rest of the launch involved photo ops of the drivers together and separately next to the car and Kevan throwing a brief shout-out to the crews. The lights swarmed over them when he did, and Brienne and the others gave small nods and waves to the politely applauding audience before it went dim again.

“Shortest one yet, you think?” Bronn asked Pod, who nodded glumly. 

Kevan thanked everyone for coming, Tywin strode back onstage and stood near Lancel while Jaime turned on his heel and disappeared to the back, and then the lights came on and the media and audience were ushered out as the car was cautiously lowered back into the underground area. 

“Now what?” Brienne asked Bronn, who stood and rubbed his lower back. 

“Now we get the car back home and the real work begins.” 

“Don't forget the p-p-party!” Podrick reminded them cheerfully. 

“I don't think I'm going,” Brienne said. She had hoped she could spend the evening doing laundry and going to bed as soon as she was tired, which would probably be right after dinner. They had to be in the garage tomorrow to start preparation for the preseason and she needed a break from all things Lannister, even if just for a night. 

“You have to go.” Jaime appeared at the end of the row, his arms crossed over his chest. Bronn shoved past him and Brienne strode forward hoping he'd move but Jaime just stood there, tall and handsome and smelling of some soft, rich cologne. It was vexing. 

Brienne frowned at him. “No, I don't.”

“It's part of the job. You have to smile for the cameras, just like me.”

“Since when are media ops part of the mechanic's job? If you need someone up there, get a race engineer.”

She could almost hear Jaime grinding his teeth. “I haven't signed one yet.” From behind Jaime, Bronn snorted. “Even if I had, they'd still want to show you off, too.” 

“I'm not one of your cars. I don't belong to Lannister Corp,” she growled. 

“I don't think you read your contract close enough, then.” He said it lightly but neither of them could deny the heavy burden of its truth. They'd both signed their lives away, not just to the sport but to Lannister Corp in particular. “I'll be there, too,” Jaime offered. 

“How does that help?” 

“I could keep you company when you get sick of these two,” he indicated Bronn and Podrick.

“I don't want your company,” she snapped, willing it to be true, and his head jerked back like she'd slapped him. 

His eyes narrowed. “Fine, then I can be there so people don't have to look at just you.” 

Podrick gasped behind her, and Brienne swallowed down the hot rush of anger and disappointment rising in her throat. Instead of trying to find words she shoved past Jaime and strode from the arena, Jaime's “Wrench, wait” chasing after her.

* * *

“What the fuck was that?” Bronn asked as they watched Brienne stalk away. Jaime's shoulder throbbed where she'd pushed him aside.

“I was trying to help.”

“Well you cocked it up.” 

Jaime glared at him but didn't dispute the fact. She'd looked like a knight of old facing down Martyn, ready to withstand the onslaught of his fists, but Jaime's words had made her white-faced and wounded-eyed, and the rigid line of her back as he'd called out to her was as loud as a curse.

Podrick shoved past him, too, giving Jaime the angriest glare he was certain the boy was capable of, and Jaime was briefly impressed at the ferocity of it. It had been a month and Pod was already as loyal as a rescued dog to Brienne. At this rate she'd be able to lead most of the crew in mutiny against him soon. Even now, though, aching and angry as she may be, he knew she wouldn't do that to him. Back in Selwyn's garage he'd seen the unvarnished truth in her eyes that he could trust her. She'd proven it already in the interview with Melisandre, and with how she worked hard for his team every day no matter how terrible he was. 

What he didn't understand was why it made him so furious that she was who she'd promised to be. 

“You still need a race engineer,” Bronn said, staring at him intently. 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“She's not gonna do it if you keep on like this.”

Jaime turned on him. “I'm not going to ask her to be my race engineer!” 

“Who are you gonna ask then? Me? My answer's no.”

“I'm not-” Jaime pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I still have some leads.”

“Do you now. Who?”

“I'm keeping them secret,” Jaime muttered and he and Bronn both knew how stupid that answer was. 

“Your secret list of race engineers, hm?” Jaime glared at him and Bronn shook his head. “I just hope Brienne Tarth's name is on that list or you're fucked.”

* * *

The party was in full swing by the time Jaime arrived. He hadn't changed or picked anyone up or even done any interviews to excuse his late arrival; as the night crept nearer he'd simply sat on the hood of his car in the far edge of the parking lot of the hotel and smoked, waiting for either his anger at his father or his fear of pissing him off to win out.

From his vantage point, Jaime could see everyone else arrive. There were a whole parade of Lannisters that filtered in, as well as the lampreys that were always attached to them. His crew appeared in ones and twos, more Lannisters, more lackeys, Bronn sticking out like a sore thumb as he always did in these situations and yet Jaime was glad to see him there. Clegane's car pulled up and Jaime stubbed out his cigarette as he watched Brienne let herself out of the back. The media waiting outside went wild when they saw her, cameras flashing in the growing darkness, but Brienne only ducked her head and nearly ran into the safety of the hotel. 

So she had come after all. Jaime exhaled slowly, releasing like so much smoke the worry that he'd finally driven her away. 

Jaime hurried across the parking lot, slowing to a casual saunter as he neared the entrance and the press noticed his arrival. 

“Jaime!” “Mr. Lannister!” “This way, please!” “Smile for us, Jaime!” Their shouts overlapped into a familiar chorus and he gave a brief wave but didn't pause for photos. 

As he neared the ballrooms they'd rented for the party, the swirl of music and chatter grew. This was a tasteful affair, as all of Tywin Lannster's parties were. The music was classical, the wine and champagne were expensive and free-flowing, and the food consisted of bite-sized gourmet delicacies that you'd have to eat an entire platter of to be full. It was a party thrown purely to show off Lannister Corp's – and Tywin's by extension – wealth. 

Even in a sea of blonde Lannisters, Jaime found Brienne as soon as he stepped inside. She was on the far end examining a perfectly modeled ice sculpture of the car, gaping and pointing out details with Podrick. Jaime wove through the crowd towards them, shrugging off both the fake smiles and suspicious glances of those he passed, until Brienne and Pod turned to leave the table and noticed him walking up. Their pleasant talk halted and their faces transformed into twin glares reminiscent of high school kids from movies. Though Jaime supposed _he_ was the Mean Girl in this case and Brienne was the plucky heroine with her best friend. 

Brienne turned away from him almost as soon as she saw him, her simple black cocktail dress swishing around her knees as she did. It was strange seeing her in the dress when he'd gotten so used to her in her jumpsuits, and it made the party feel like a surreal dream. He saw with surprise that she was wearing heels, low ones that were just high enough to pull her calves long and tight as she walked away. Podrick folded his arms across his chest and stood in Jaime's path. 

“Good evening, Podrick,” Jaime tried, smiling warmly at the younger man. 

“W-w-what do you want?”

“I just want to be sure everyone's enjoying the party.”

“We're f-f-fine.” Jaime glanced over Pod's head and saw Brienne waiting a distance away, watching them. Her black dress made her pale skin seem almost translucent under the sea of freckles; he suspected if he looked hard enough he'd be able to trace the intricate highways of her blood vessels down her chest. She had no makeup to offset anything about her face, though her eyes were as electric blue and expressive as ever, and they were billboards proclaiming loudly how unhappy she was to see him. 

“Did you try the carpaccio yet?” he asked Pod. “It looks delicious.” 

“D-don't try t-to ignore w-what happened.” 

“You mean my chief mechanic and I having a small disagreement?”

Pod's frown deepened. “I'm s-s-serious, Jaime.”

Jaime glanced up at Brienne again, who'd drifted closer clearly trying to hear what they were saying. “Is she going to apologize first?”

“Apologize?” Brienne had apparently gotten near enough. “For what?”

“I recall you saying you couldn't bear to spend even a single second with me.” 

“I did not.” Her brow furrowed in a way he was becoming well-acquainted with. 

“No, you were much pithier.” 

“Ah, there she is!” Jaime groaned as first his brother's voice, and then his brother, joined them. “The inestimable Brienne Tarth.” Tyrion's head tilted at an angle that must have hurt his neck to take her all in. Though he had mismatched green and black eyes and mismatched blond and black hair and wasn't at all what Jaime would call attractive, Tyrion still had a compelling charm to him that worked wonders with women. Tyrion stuck out his hand and Brienne bent down a little to shake it. 

“Hello?” she said, clearly having no idea who he was. 

“Tyrion Lannister, Jaime's little brother in every meaning of the word except the most important,” Tyrion said, giving her a roguish smile. Brienne's cheeks went pink at the innuendo. “I've been looking forward to meeting you. Jaime's told me almost nothing about you except how wildly competent you are.”

Did she look...pleased? Jaime gave her a little nod when she glanced his way. 

“Do you work for Lannister Corp, too?” she asked Tyrion.

“Much to my father's dismay,” Tyrion said, lifting his glass in a sarcastic toast. “I helped draft your contract.” 

“Oh. Well. Thank you. I'm happy to be a part of your brother's team,” she said politely. 

“You'd be the only one.” Tyrion took a long drink of his champagne, staring up at Brienne over the rim of his glass as he did, and Jaime felt the strangest desire to stand in-between them, blocking his brother's view. “You are remarkable,” Tyrion continued. “Does the height run in your family or are you an outlier like me?”

Jaime studied Brienne, saw her soften a bit at the shared understanding of their personal uniqueness in the world. 

“I get it from my father,” she said, smiling gently at Tyrion. “He's taller than I am.”

“Is he taller than the Hound?”

“Possibly. Sandor doesn't usually get out of the car so I'm not sure.”

“Sandor?” Jaime scoffed. How had she connected with everyone else in his life but him? Surely he'd spent more time with her than Clegane, but she still couldn't bring herself to call him 'Jaime.' “Does he know you call you him that?”

“He does,” she said, her voice flint, her features stoic again as she looked at Jaime. 

Jaime knew Tyrion was watching them with calculating eyes, taking in everything he needed to know in the simplest exchange. Growing up with his brother had been at least fifty percent honing his ability to keep even the tiniest secrets from Tyrion's piercing mind. 

“Remarkable,” Tyrion said again, taking another drink. “I see your beautiful hands are empty, Ms Tarth, can I get a drink for you?”

Brienne flushed again. “Just water is fine.” 

“Nonsense. You can't make it through an entire Lannister party with no alcohol. That's not an attack on you, that's just science.” He gestured with his glass at the nearest bartender, who seemed to not only notice Tyrion, but understand what he meant and also care enough to start pouring the drink. Jaime pressed his lips together. “Have you been introduced to everyone yet?”

“No, I really just came to see what it was like, I'm not planning on staying long.”

“Ah ah ah,” Tyrion tsked. “You're the first woman chief mechanic in Formula One history and you belong to Lannister Corp. You've got to make the rounds. But luckily for you,” he gestured for the waiter who'd arrived with her drink to hand it to her, “you've got me to do the honors. We'll make a fine pair, don't you think?” 

Brienne looked panicked for a second and Jaime stepped in. “You're half as tall but you're twice as pushy as father, Tyrion. Leave her be.”

“It needs to be done. Might as well happen on the arm of someone who understands why it's an awful chore.” Tyrion held his arm up awkwardly, elbow at the height of his shoulder, and Brienne touched her hand to it. It looked ridiculous and sweet and Jaime briefly imagined yanking them apart when Tyrion smiled victoriously up at him. “Off we go to war, my lady. I'll start with the nicer ones first so we can ease into it.” 

Jaime shoved his hands into his pockets and glared after them, watching as Tyrion led her to his aunt Genna first, before the crowd flowed to fill in the space they'd left and he could only see Brienne's head as Tyrion led her to the next person. 

“You still have to apologize,” Pod sing-songed next to him. Jaime growled low in his throat and the younger man's face paled and he skittered away.

* * *

Jaime couldn't avoid his own responsibilities after that, and he spent the next hour making pointless small talk with people who secretly and not-so-secretly hated him, a too-brief interlude with Genna where she made him feel like he wasn't actually the worst Lannister, and an interaction with Bronn that consisted entirely of Bronn asking him if the secret list of race engineers was password-protected or just written down somewhere while Jaime barely resisted throwing his drink in the man's smirking face.

He did not, for even a second, forget about Brienne. At one point her laugh rang out like a loud, pealing bell and Jaime wanted to run to the her side of the room to see who had made her laugh like that. It was absurd in every way that his annoying, bull-headed, unforgiving chief mechanic haunted him through the entire soiree, but he couldn't make himself stop being aware of her. He just needed to apologize, that was all, and then he could leave the party and go to the arms of one of the women who didn't make him want to run his car into a retaining wall out of spite. 

Restless, miserable, and drunker than he first thought, Jaime pushed his way through the crowd to where Brienne and Tyrion were still together talking animatedly. 

“Wrench!” Jaime roared as he strode up, and they lifted their heads in perfect synchronization, though the resemblance stopped there. Tyrion looked amused and curious while Brienne looked both mad and nervous. 

“My name-”

“I know your fucking name.” She glared at him and her body tensed under her stupid dress; a warrior readying for battle in flimsy, revealing armor. She looked fragile wrapped in just the simple cloth; didn't she know it wouldn't protect her? Around them it grew quieter as the other, mostly-as-drunk partygoers sensed a storm brewing. 

“Then use it.”

“I'll call you what I like. You can't argue me out of everything.” 

“I'm just doing my job.”

“You don't have to be so...so tall. And competent.”

“Is that what your problem is? That I'm bigger and smarter than you?”

Jaime's hand went tight around the thick glass of the whiskey tumbler he'd moved onto after the champagne and wine. His feelings were swirling as much as the drink in his trembling hand. “You've got a lot of nerve acting like you know everything when I'm the one who found you in some faraway garage.” 

Brienne shifted, crossed her muscled arms over her mostly flat chest. “You forget that the Starks showed up first.”

“Yes and they took one look at you and ran.” 

“Jaime.” That was Tyrion, his voice hard. “You're drunk. Go home.” 

The music continued to play loudly in the sudden silence of their half of the room. “So magnanimous tonight, Tyrion. Did you share with her what you told me? Something about being tongue-level?”

Now they were both glaring furiously at him, though Brienne was sparing some of hers for his brother. 

“What's going on here?” The controlled voice of Tywin Lannister dropped down like an icy blanket on the fire that was threatening to explode. Jaime shut his eyes, but opened them again when he felt his body sway dangerously. 

“Just having a little chat,” Tyrion said darkly. “Nothing to tarnish your reputation, Father.” 

Tywin, dressed in an expensive dark suit that looked like every other dark suit he owned, slid into a space that seemed both outside their circle and in-between all three of them. He flicked his cold eyes around at the rest of the partygoers and they all turned away when he did, their chatter resuming, though subdued enough Jaime knew they were all still straining to listen. 

“I expected one of my sons to be foolishly drunk tonight, but I didn't think it would be you,” Tywin said sharply, holding Jaime in place with just a look. “You're an idiot.” 

_I know you are but what am I?_ Jaime thought, and then felt an appropriately idiotic grin slide over his face. Tywin huffed in disgust as though he'd heard every word and turned to Tyrion. 

“Do not fraternize with the workers. I know you can barely keep your pants on in the best of times, but leave her out of it. And Ms Tarth,” Jaime saw Brienne go stiff and straight, presenting herself bravely for his father's dressing down. “Whatever you've done or are doing with my sons, it must be professional at all times. I know you have very little actual IAF experience, but I did not think I would have to explain to you that you're a role model and even though you would not be my choice, you represent Lannister Corp to a media and fanbase that is, unbelievably, desperate to get to know you. I am paying you to do good work and to keep Lannister Corp out of the gossip pages, not whore yourself out to my sons, do I make myself clear?”

There was a familiar flare in her blue eyes and for a long, endless second Jaime felt words of warning collide in his throat, knowing if he couldn't stop her she'd get herself fired then and there. But she just nodded, once, as sharp as a salute, and Tywin lifted an eyebrow and turned away. He paused for a moment next to Jaime and whispered harshly, “go home immediately,” before disappearing back into the crowd. 

Jaime stuck his tongue out at his father's back before facing Tyrion, ready to commiserate, but Tyrion was still glaring at him. “What?” Jaime asked, perplexed, until he saw Brienne staring at him, too, eyes bright with unshed tears, her chin trembling. Jaime's heart tightened and he discovered there was room for new and painful regret on top of all the other razor-sharp shards he'd collected through his life. The room was floaty, the noise muted and bubbling like he was underwater. Brienne turned and he was stuck in slow motion as he reached out to keep her from leaving angry yet again. 

Bronn grabbed his arm.

“Given how shitty your every attempt at being a decent human has been today, let's just get you home and try again tomorrow,” he said, tugging Jaime away. 

“Wait,” Jaime said, trying to resist as the room kept swimming around him. He tried to count back through the number of drinks he'd had and lost track after four. “I didn't apologize,” he said, looking over his shoulder to find Brienne, failing to fight Bronn's relentless pull away from her. 

“Put it first thing on your To Do list tomorrow. Ah fuck,” Bronn muttered and then Cersei was there, green eyes narrowed dangerously. 

“Dear sister,” Jaime said, tugging at his collar, thinking of Brienne. 

“What is wrong with you?” she hissed. 

“Pretty sure I'm drunk,” Jaime said loudly. 

Disdain dripped from Cersei's every perfectly-sized pore. “Not surprising given the company you keep.”

“Hey now, I had nothing to do with this,” Bronn protested.

Cersei ignored him. “Who is that woman you and Tyrion were fighting over? Is that the mechanic everyone's blathering on about?” Raised in a racing family, married into a racing family, and still Cersei could barely bring herself to be civil about the sport that defined Jaime's life. Too loud, too dangerous, too dirty, too much time and attention away from her, especially when there was so little space for a woman in the sport. His twin had never even tried to understand that side of him, she'd just judged him and pushed him away as soon as he'd decided he was, in fact, not her mirror. Cersei had always treated his love of racing as his greatest flaw and she'd grown to aggressively hate it the more he'd devoted himself to it. She'd spent the last twenty plus years furiously punishing him for it, until they were more enemies than twins. 

“We weren't fighting over her,” Jaime said. 

“She's so big and unattractive. Nothing like your usual tarts.” One of those tarts was Melara, who had been Cersei's best friend once upon a time until she'd also decided Cersei couldn't control her life. Melara and Jaime had reconnected a couple of years ago when they'd run into each other by chance, and they'd kept each other on speed dial for nights like this, when they needed someone who would understand when the other person didn't stay for the morning. 

“Unless you want your brother to vomit all over those expensive shoes, we best be on our way,” Bronn said grimly, and though Jaime knew he was making up an excuse to leave, it was starting to feel like maybe vomiting on someone's shoes was going to be an inevitable end to the evening. Cersei flinched away and watched them go with her nose wrinkled in disgust, Jaime waving cheerfully at her as Bronn dragged him out of the room. Bronn grabbed a water bottle as they walked by the outgoing table and shoved it into Jaime's hand. It was cold and wet from the ice bath it had been sitting in, and Jaime pressed it to his forehead gratefully. 

“You drive yourself?” Bronn asked when they were back in the night. He'd diverted Jaime to a side entrance, where no media were waiting to get pictures of the drunken party-goers as they left. Bronn patted down Jaime's pants, grabbed his keys, and texted someone quickly while Jaime gulped down the fresh air. The alley smelled like garbage and old socks, but it was better than the swirling cacophony of expensive perfumes they'd emerged from. 

“Hound's gonna drive you home,” Bronn said. He looked up from his phone. “You're gonna drink that water, fill it up and drink it again, go to sleep, and come in tomorrow ready to eat whatever shit Brienne throws at you, do you hear me?”

“I don't understand her,” Jaime said, staring unseeing at the water bottle in his hand. 

“_She_ makes perfect sense. _You_ don't understand how to deal with someone who doesn't want anything from you besides respect.”

“She's so...” The crackle of the plastic bottle was loud as he squeezed it. 

“Honest?”

“Obstinate.”

Bronn laughed bitterly. “You should talk. She's gonna quit, you know.”

Jaime blinked, once and then again, trying to grab hold of the sudden thread of anxiety unspooling inside him. “She can't.”

“She can and she fucking will if you don't stop this.” Bronn stared out into the night. “She asked me about the crash. If you did it on purpose.”

The cracked concrete of the alley seemed to be shifting under their feet. “What did you say?”

“I said she shouldn't ask again.”

The Hound's car pulled up to the alley entrance and Bronn pulled the door open for Jaime and bodily shoved him inside. 

“What do _you_ think happened?” Jaime asked once he was collapsed in the back seat of the car, Bronn staring down at him through the open door. 

“I think most days I know, but then sometimes...” he shrugged. “You're great at racing, but you're a fuck-up at everything else. How do I know who showed up to the track that day?” He slammed the door shut before Jaime could answer. 

It took another three glasses of whiskey once he got home before Jaime finally passed out on his couch, a repeat of his and Brienne's interview with Melisandre easing him into the black.

* * *

Brienne stood outside the Lannister Corp Racing offices the next day, the early morning sun weak through the haze, and debated about whether this would be her last time here.

The car launch party had ended in disaster, caused, as she should have expected, by Jaime, this time drunk and angry for reasons she still couldn't figure out. She hadn't stayed much after Jaime's ignoble exit, but even in those last twenty minutes, Tyrion had avoided her while the rest of the Lannister family and hangers-on watched her with gossip-hungry eyes, whispering and gesturing with their elegant flutes of champagne. They'd been polite enough when Tyrion had introduced her around, though Brienne had easily seen the scorn and insincerity behind their smiles. She'd been almost relieved when Jaime had shouted for her, until she'd seen the hurt gliding unexpectedly over his face. 

A stunning woman with golden hair and Jaime's green eyes had sauntered up to her a few minutes after Jaime left, and gave Brienne the most degrading once-over she'd ever experienced. 

“Brienne Tarth,” the woman said in a voice of poisoned honey. “I've heard so much about you.” 

“Who are you?” Brienne asked, tired of trying to be friendly to these people. 

“I see both of my brothers have failed to mention me,” she said, the sweetness turning sour in a flash. “I'm Cersei, Jaime's twin sister.” 

That explained the looks. Brienne could see the same ironic detachment that Jaime used as a shield, although Cersei's looked like she wallowed in it. “Great,” Brienne had said, looking for Pod. She found him coming out of the bathrooms on the other side of the room and tried to catch his eye. 

“I hope you aren't going to dirty the Lannister name,” Cersei said and Brienne dragged her attention back. “It would be unseemly to find out you were screwing Jaime or Tyrion.” 

“I'm a mechanic,” Brienne ground out, sick of defending her skills to everyone. “I'm only here to work on the car.” 

“Mm. Make sure you keep it that way.”

Pod had apparently gotten her signal because he appeared then, glueing himself to her side, and Cersei drifted away without another word, though her insinuations lingered. Pod tried to distract Brienne with stories about dumb things he'd done when he first got into racing, but his desperate, stumbling chatter couldn't help her outrace the shame and embarrassment that followed her around every lap of her life, no matter how hard she tried to beat it. The music and the crowd had pressed in on her from every side, boxing her in. She'd needed to escape but when she texted Sandor he'd replied he was busy and that she could either wait an hour or find another way home, which was how Brienne had ended up on a bus in the middle of the night in her cocktail dress, avoiding the creepy stare of a man four rows ahead of her, and trying not to cry.

Now after a night of almost no sleep and a breakfast of only coffee, she'd taken the first bus at dawn to the offices, hoping it would give her focused time to think about whether she could stand another ten months of this – of long, hard days, of belligerent team mates, of Jaime and his awful family – or if Goodwin was right and she'd have to pay too much for this chance. 

“Maybe exercise will help,” she sighed, unlocking the office doors and heading for the gym through the empty hallways. The dignified significance of the place, the history and fame, called to her in the quiet as it always did, but it was getting harder to hear it over the constant rush of rejection she faced at every turn. Rejection of her skills, of her hard work, of even her looks, though that shouldn't matter to her any longer. It didn't, mostly, except when it came from Jaime. 

Jaime fucking Lannister. Brienne slammed the locker shut and marched into the gym, going immediately for the weight bench. She'd thought they had come to an understanding after the interview, but apparently they'd just been graced with distance and not any real change. He was as mercurial as the storms on Tarth but even less predictable and she couldn't deal with it for a whole year, not when their days would be so consistently entwined. 

Brienne pushed her body to its limits for an hour, until she nearly collapsed off of the treadmill, sweating all over, heart pounding in her chest, but her mind finally quiet. She cooled herself down with a rinse before treating herself to the sauna. 

She opened the sauna door and a blast of warm, humid air crept down her throat, soaked into her body from the inside out. She shut the door behind her and sat on the smooth, heated wood of one of the benches, closing her eyes in relief. The air was thick and she was already sweating a little, her muscles melting pleasantly. Brienne leaned her head back against the wall and her tension released into the silent room. If this was her last day, she'd take full advantage of the benefits before she went. 

She was drifting on a sea of steam and heat when a rush of cold air blew in and continued to blow as whoever it was held the door open. Brienne frowned and opened her eyes to see Jaime standing there with bleary eyes, unkempt hair, and wearing only a towel. He looked wrecked and ragged as he finally shut the door and shuffled into the room to sit down on the opposite side of the sauna from her, but it was still impossible to ignore the smooth shift of his muscles under golden skin, a god brought low by the weakness of his humanity. 

Brienne casually tightened her own towel around her body as her stomach swooped and jittered. 

Jaime leaned his head back against the wall, watching her with half-closed eyes. “I didn't think you'd come back.”

“I don't know why I did. All you do is insult me.” 

“I intended to apologize last night.”

She gaped at him. “You can't be serious.”

“I did,” he insisted. 

“Bullshit,” she said and he winced. 

“I did,” he said again. “I fucked it up, but I didn't accost you just to get in another fight.” 

“Then why did it happen?”

“I don't know!” he said, dragging his hand through his hair. 

Brienne closed her eyes. She was so tired, her energy dissipating with the sweat, dripping out of her and evaporating on the floor. 

“You said you'd defend me,” she murmured, the words slipping out. “Who's going to defend me from you?”

She heard Jaime shift in the muffled quiet, opened her eyes to find him staring down at his hands. This whole thing had been a mistake. Anything she'd really wanted had never been hers, not once. Why would it be different now? “I should leave,” she said quietly, not sure if she was thinking of the sauna or King's Landing entirely.

“Please don't.” His voice was as soft and thick as the air. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm such an asshole.” 

“We don't have to like each other, Lannister, but I won't be disrespected. I can't stay here just because you're desperate. I can't let your awful history bring me down.”

“My awful history.” Jaime laughed, as jagged as crumpled metal. “My finest act you mean.”

“How can you say that? Accident or not, you killed a man.”

“I know! For the gods' sake, I know. You think I don't carry that with me every fucking day? That I don't see his destroyed car every night? I killed Aerys Targaryen.” The words were heavy with the weight of his regret, his body slumped under it. “You think I caused the crash on purpose.”

Brienne remembered Bronn's flint-eyed glare when she'd asked him what he believed. Impossibly that had been two weeks ago. She felt like she was floating, untethered in time. “The IAF-”

“Fuck the IAF. What do _you_ think?”

He looked dangerous now as he leaned avidly towards her, his hair slicked back, eyes dark and piercing in the dim light of the sauna. The curve of his muscles was as tight as the parabolica in Braavos. 

“I-I don't know.”

“You think I could have.” He was too close, pressing in on her as much as the air, though he hadn't moved at all from where he sat across the room. 

“Yes,” she admitted.

He nodded a little and deflated again, like her admission had pricked him and his pride had rushed out. 

“I didn't mean to kill him,” he said quietly and went still. She wanted to lie down but was afraid she'd fall asleep and the thick air would suffocate her. 

“What happened, Jaime?” she asked instead, sure he would ignore her, but his head jerked up, startling her with its suddenness. 

Jaime's eyes burned desperately. “I only meant to stop him. He would do anything to win, he told me enough times. There'd been other accidents that season – do you remember?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, pressing her damp towel against her chest, her fingers digging into her own arms. She could barely remember her name in this moment but it hit her, suddenly, that season years ago when she'd been a young teenager and it was just her and her dad watching race days together, and she still believed that drivers were brave, honorable heroes. There _had_ been other accidents that season, she recalled now. Terrible ones. “Brandon Stark,” she said aloud. His car had exploded in a fireball that had left him horrifically burned; if not for Aerys it would have been all anyone remembered from that year.

“Yes,” Jaime said urgently. “His was the worst. He never went back to racing after that.”

“No one was penalized-”

“They couldn't prove it any better than they could prove mine. You think they were going to risk hamstringing Aerys? After Dayne left he brought in all the fans and money, until me.”

Brienne grimaced. It was too much, she was too tired to hear all this now, but she had to know. “It doesn't make any sense. Why would Aerys do that?”

“He wanted to win. Everything he was, every part of his black soul was twisted toward it. Losing wasn't an option, losing to men he didn't respect unthinkable. He'd tell me all the time that he'd win at any cost. That wasn't a wise mentor sharing stories and advice, he was _warning_ me. I was good enough to beat him that year, especially with Stark out of the running for the championship, and he was telling me he would never let that happen.”

“But how do you know he did it on purpose?”

“He admitted it. This was before cell phones were everywhere so they managed to keep it out of the news but Aerys drank, he did drugs. The only day of the week he wasn't on something was race day, and then it was the adrenaline that fueled him. Monday night after Brandon's crash we were late in the office, I thought to prepare for the next week's race, but he made me watch the replay. He'd been snorting something, too much of it. He was laughing.” Jaime's face was twisted, full of agonized hatred and Brienne couldn't tell if it was for Aerys or himself. “He rewound it over and over; the crash, the fire, and he laughed the whole time, pointing out where he'd done it, saying how he'd never had such a good result before. We still didn't even know if Stark would survive then. 'I hope you all burn,' he told me.” Jaime's voice was hoarse and it hurt just to hear him drag the words from wherever he'd been hiding them deep inside. “The next day he didn't even remember we'd talked and I thought...maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I had misunderstood him. Maybe it was just the drugs talking. Then a few races later I saw him going for Selmy. I saw it and then I saw Stark's crash again and I _knew_-” Jaime swallowed and stared hard at the ceiling. “They'd changed the trackside from grass to kerb for the first time that year. You know the problem with the early kerbs?”

She nodded. They'd often been built too high and they became launch pads for lightweight, super-fast Formula cars. 

“I figured I'd just nudge Aerys, maybe make him spin out a little. If I'd paid more attention, if I'd been more focused, maybe...” Jaime thudded his head against the wall once, hard. “The IAF were furious and when they came for me I didn't know what to do. They wouldn't take my calls even before the crash. They were thrilled to send me back down to F3, to keep me out as long as they could until even they couldn't deny me any longer.” 

“Did you tell your father?”

“I tried,” he said, dark and bitter and sad. “He said if I was smart I would accept the penalty, keep my mouth shut, and not ruin my career. At least I know he was wrong about that; I ruined my career anyway.”

“Why didn't you tell someone else?” Brienne managed, the words swallowed by the thick heat of the sauna.

“Who would have listened? I was some punk, arrogant kid to all of them. They would have said I was jealous, that I was just trying to steal the championship. IAF didn't even investigate Stark's crash, they called it a terrible tragedy and then gave Aerys a fifteen minute interview where he pretended to care about Stark and how he'd appreciated having a real challenger and Brandon would be missed. After Aerys' crash they put more cameras in at every track, because they regretted that they didn't have enough footage to show I'd done it on purpose. IAF and the media had labeled me reckless and troublesome before I even sat down at the wheel of my first F1 practice. And I couldn't have been the only driver who knew about all the things Aerys was. He'd had other teammates before me. Why would they care now?” 

The season Aerys had died, he'd been the biggest racing star in the world. She tried to imagine young upstart Jaime Lannister coming forward, claiming his own teammate had caused the accidents of his competitors, that Aerys was a man driven over the edge out of a single-minded need to win. 

She wouldn't have believed him either, not back then.

“I believe you,” she said now, and Jaime sagged back against the wall like his bones had been made of this secret alone. She felt faint herself, the heat suffusing her blood. “Does Bronn know all this?”

He looked at her from under long eyelashes. “No one knows but you.”

Brienne wanted to yell at him – _Why me? Why me? Why me? I don't want this. I would have done the job either way._ But that was a lie. She'd been ready to run from this, from him. Jaime had carried the weight of all of the racing world's contempt for sixteen years, knowing he'd never intended it, knowing his agonized silence was saving the reputation of the terrible man he had killed. If he could bear that, then she could bear this. “Then I won't share it,” she said.

“Thank you,” he rasped. 

He looked cleansed, his forehead smooth. For the first time since she'd met him, Jaime's eyes were calm. The sauna seemed suddenly too small and too hot, the air clogging her lungs. 

“I should go,” Brienne said, standing quickly and swaying on her feet. Jaime was at her side in an instant, his hands strong on her bare arms; she didn't know if his palms were just that hot or if they felt that way because they were pressed so firmly against her skin. His fingers were gentler than she expected. 

“Easy, Wrench,” he said from far too close. 

“My name is Brienne,” she managed through the thickness in her throat. 

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” She clenched her eyes shut and discovered enough energy to pull free of Jaime's grip and open the door, sucking in the cold air and feeling it wash away the lightheadedness, drive some energy back into her numb body, steer her safely away from the weight of Jaime's admission. “See?” Brienne knew she must look awful, hair sweaty and matted to her head, skin flushed red from the heat. In contrast, Jaime was the definition of glimmering with sweat; a sheen that traced the lines of his muscles, the shadow of his hips peeking over the top of his towel, that made his body seem to glow in the reflected light from the hall. “I just need some water and sleep. I'm going to head home and do the rest of my work today from there. Give my apologies to Bronn.”

She was half out of the door before he said, “Brienne.”

Her name on his tongue felt like she'd touched a charged car and it shivered through her. She glanced back at him over her shoulder. 

“Will you stay?” he asked. 

There was a joke or an accusation on her tongue – or a question, dark and twisted: was he relieved that Aerys had died? – but she just nodded at him before escaping from the sauna's heated grasp.


	5. February (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He made a noise that was somewhere between disgust and despair and turned until she grabbed his arm with her strong hand. “What?” he snapped. 
> 
> “I know what happens on the track is on you. But pit stops are on me and the crew. Getting the car ready and in top shape are on us, too. You don't want to talk about it, but I know you know how important your race engineer is or you wouldn't be looking so hard. The whole race isn't on your shoulders alone.” 
> 
> “That's not what the fans and the bloggers and the sportswriters think,” he said bitterly. 
> 
> “Fuck them.” Jaime blinked, surprised. Even Martyn hadn't driven her to curse. “You can only take the car so far by yourself. Isn't that what the last few years have proven, over and over?”
> 
> “Then I guess I'm fucked,” he said on a hoarse laugh. “Because nothing has changed.”
> 
> She squeezed his arm warmly. He'd forgotten her hand was still holding him; it felt natural to have it there. “Yes it has,” she said, “you have me.”

Winter testing was in Sunspear, as it was every year. Though calling it winter testing when Sunspear was drenched in eternal summer always felt odd to Jaime, but after leaving behind rain in King's Landing he was happy to feel the sun on his skin as he stepped onto the tarmac. His uncle had chartered a small jet so the Lannister Corp drivers and executives could arrive in appropriate style, and cameras waited behind a low fence to capture every minute of it. Jaime settled his sunglasses on his face, waving to them. He felt loose and relaxed, the lightest he'd been at winter testing in years. Maybe ever.

Brienne, as promised, had returned to work Monday morning. Jaime had waited in his office, staring out the window at her empty desk and not daring to hope until she'd walked in, greeted Bronn hunched over his laptop, and set her things down. She'd turned then to look through Jaime's window and when he met her eyes, she'd nodded once and gotten to work. 

Jaime had exhaled loudly in his office and done the same. The days before winter testing were nonstop for everyone and he and Brienne only passed each other in the halls, occasionally asking a question about the car – where did he want the steering wheel positioned? What was her plan for emergency front wing replacements during a race? – only to hurry off to their next task. Jaime was polite through every interaction, no matter how he wanted to settle into old habits, and after a few days she didn't tense when he walked up. After a week she even started greeting him in the mornings. 

It still amazed him that he had told anyone, let alone her, his secret and been believed. Through the years Jaime had imagined telling a hundred different people in a hundred different ways and every time it ended with disbelief and rage. Brienne had listened, tested him against his story, and found him to be true. 

Since then he felt like he'd lanced an infected wound and all the contamination was leaking away. He still felt tender and raw, didn't want to poke at it or show it to anyone else, but for the first time in over fifteen years there was the possibility that the too-deep valleys carved into his heart might heal at least enough to scar. All thanks to Brienne Tarth. Tall, strong, dedicated Brienne, with freckles, he'd discovered, that covered her shoulders and back and chest, and legs so long even the Lannister Corp luxury towels barely fit her. 

He wondered what she was doing now, how she was liking her first trip with the team. The crew had all taken a bus down days earlier with the car-hauler and for a brief moment Jaime had considered going with them. It would have been more entertaining than the dreary, cheerless plane ride he'd just been through. 

“Mr. Lannister!” “Kevan, just a few questions!” “Lancel, give us a quote!” The media were popping off lights and requests even though they'd been told ahead of time this wasn't an interview opportunity. He saw Kevan and Lancel give them waves and keep moving and Jaime was seized by a wild flash of disobedience. He hated having to perform for the media as part of his contract, but he loved fucking with Kevan more. 

He altered course to head straight for the small crowd, who grew more insistent as he approached, grinning at them and trying not to laugh when he heard Kevan's muttered “what in the blazes is he doing?” 

“Mr. Lannister!” A young man caught Jaime's eye, waving frantically. He was extremely skinny with short brown hair and an honest-to-the-gods little spiral-bound notebook like a reporter of old. Jaime recognized everyone else clumped here from years of media scrums but this fresh-faced youngster stood out. 

“Who are you?” Jaime asked, directing his attention to the young man and earning a nervous smile. 

“Josmyn Peckledon, sir. Most people know me as Peck. I've got a Formula 1 news blog and I help the IAF arrange Grid Kids.”

“Grid Kids?” Jaime squinted, trying to recall the name. 

“Yes sir, it's the program the IAF started last year where we bring kids who are doing well in their karting careers to meet professional drivers and be a part of the pre-race grid ceremony in most of the cities.” 

“Ah, yes.” Jaime tilted his head down to peer at Peck over the top of his sunglasses. “That's why there's all those kids there all the time now.”

“Each driver can have their own kid assigned to them in different cities, they sometimes do interviews or will show the children around. The kids love it.”

“Does Stark do it?”

“Robb Stark? He has, yes, sir. A few times. Your teammate did it last year, too.”

“Did he?” Jaime glanced over his shoulder at Lancel and Kevan who were hovering, uncertain about whether they should follow Jaime's bad example, or if they'd look worse not engaging when he had. He looked back at Peck. “Why haven't you asked me?”

“Y-you?” The young man's eyes went wide. 

“Afraid I'll corrupt the youth?”

“Oh no, no sir. We asked you last year, several times, but...”

“But I ignored you.”

“Well.” Peck went red. “The last time you told me to, uh, go screw myself.”

Jaime laughed and nodded. “That sounds like me. Tell you what – try me again this season. I might surprise you.” He pushed his glasses up enough to wink at the assorted media, and then sauntered off, leaving Kevan and Lancel whispering furiously in his wake.

* * *

The track at Sunspear was one of the easier ones on the schedule, and one that Jaime had driven hundreds of laps around in his career, both in the flesh and in virtual practices, but he never missed the chance to walk the asphalt and feel the road with his own feet, re-acquaint himself with each curve and straightaway, start planning potential overtakes and braking times before he'd even sat down in the car.

When he arrived at the track the Sunday before the first practice runs of the season, he saw the imposing roaring lion's head of Lannister Corp Racing was already in place on top of their mobile command center. As he hurried towards the garage where they were keeping the test car, his heart hurried, too, eager to see his beautiful girl. 

Brienne was standing still in front of the command center, hands on the hips of her jumpsuit, her whole face contorted in thought as she stared at the door. 

“You have to pull it open, not push,” he said as he walked up, startling her. 

“Jaime!” she gasped, clutching her hand to her chest. Jaime felt a small thrill that she'd used his name when caught offguard. After the one time in the sauna she'd been back to 'Lannister' all week. 

“Everything all right?”

“Yes, yes. Bronn dropped some news about the air intake numbers before he dashed away.”

“The car's running okay?”

Brienne glanced down at him but her mind was already back on whatever Bronn had told her. “Oh, hm, yes. Trying to make some adjustments, that's all. She'll be ready for test driving tomorrow. Lannister,” her voice and eyes sharpened and Jaime unconsciously straightened at her tone. “Who's doing the test driving?”

“Me and Lancel, though he hates it. Complains nonstop, lap after lap, about how boring he finds it. But to fully test it we need two drivers and my father doesn't believe in test drivers.”

“What? Why not?”

“Only the driver can know if his car is ready,” Jaime said in his worst impersonation of his father. Brienne's lips twitched. “What really happened is the last time we had test drivers a few years ago one of them crashed and father was so furious he swore never to use them again.” 

“Seems a bit dramatic.”

“Tywin Lannister is a melodramatic old cunt and don't let anyone tell you otherwise,” Bronn said, coming up behind them.

Brienne looked around as though she expected Tywin to pop up behind a bush. “Bronn, please.” 

“He'd admit it if you asked him. Though I wouldn't ask him. Did you tell them about my idea?”

“Not yet. I was running through it in my head, I think you're off a bit. If you'll excuse us, Lannister?”

Jaime nodded and left his mechanics arguing over the details of his car, ducking behind the privacy screen that kept prying eyes from seeing into each team's garage before they were ready. The area was relatively quiet at the moment, just a few of the crew looking at screens and working at benches. He shot Podrick a brief smile when the young man waved but it was the sleek, shining body of the car that Jaime was after. She sat quietly today, getting the last tweaks and bolts needed before she'd be allowed to roar along the track tomorrow. Jaime pressed his hand to the smooth carbon fibre body and ran his fingers over the Lannister logo. He crouched down to examine the front wings, to draw his palms over the nose, poke his head in the cockpit and examine the safety belts and slot for the steering wheel. Everything looked in place as far as he could tell, though he knew the engineers and mechanics wouldn't consider the car done until the season was over. 

“Everything up to spec?” Brienne asked as he studied the new lights on the back. 

Jaime glanced across the length of the car to where Brienne stood at the front, her arms crossed over her chest, her teeth making indents in her lip. She was nervous about his opinion, he realized. “Looks good,” he said. “I look forward to seeing what she can do.” 

Brienne nodded, tucked a clump of hair behind her ear. “I do, too. We've stuck to the regulations, of course, but there's been a few small innovations the team has made even since last dynamic testing and I'm excited to see what they do.” She blinked those blue, guileless eyes at him. “Who should we connect your mic to as your race engineer?”

_Fuck._

The search for a race engineer had fizzled out nearly a week ago when Jaime's last lead had vanished with the smoke of the last cigarette he was definitely going to have. Since then he'd decided the best tactic was just to ignore it, which standing here now seemed like one of the stupider decisions Jaime had ever made. 

“I'll let you know tomorrow,” he said, hoping his tone was more 'totally in control of things' than 'totally fucking lost.'

“What about Theodan?”

“No,” Jaime said firmly. Theodan Wells was Lancel's race engineer and even if he wanted to do it, Lancel would refuse to let him and enjoy every second of it. 

“You can't just pick some random person off the street.”

“I'll have someone,” Jaime insisted. Brienne looked like she was about to protest so he asked, “do you want to walk the track with me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“As you so kindly pointed out, I don't have a race engineer yet and I could use a second pair of eyes.”

“We have to finish getting the car ready.” 

“There's a whole team responsible for that. It's a three mile track, it'll take two hours at most. One hour if you can keep up with me.”

He relished the competitive fire that lit her eyes. “That will be no trouble at all.”

* * *

In the end it took just over an hour. Not because of Brienne's speed – Jaime had to hustle to keep up with her when she got going on the straightaways – but because they spent so much time talking about how to attack the race. Brienne had an amateur's eye and asked amateur questions but they pulled Jaime back down to earth and made him think about the race in a way he hadn't in a long time. It also allowed him to point out nuances even fans in the grandstand couldn't see and that sparked further questions from her.

They walked slowly back down the pit lane towards the Lannister Corp Racing garage as the late afternoon light warmed to gold. 

“Why didn't you become a race engineer in F3?” he asked as they walked by the screened garages of Nightfort Racing and Dothrak Racing Team. 

“That's not funny,” she said, frowning. 

“I'm not trying to be funny,” he said. “It's a serious question.”

“I don't have the face for media and men don't want a woman like me telling them what to do.”

_I would_, Jaime thought. “What if someone offered it to you, would you take it?”

Brienne eyed him warily. “I don't know. It requires such an ability to quickly understand the data, to coordinate with everyone.” She looked away again. “I get flustered. But-” she stopped, both speech and feet, and stared at the privacy barrier they were in front of. 

The stylized logo of two white griffins fighting were scattered all over the red background of the screen, and Brienne appeared transfixed by them. 

“Wrench?” Jaime asked, trying to figure out what had stopped her, until he heard the sound of Renly Baratheon's voice and she flushed red. Renly emerged from behind the screen of Stag Motors, the garage next to Griffin's, laughing gaily at something his teammate Loras had said. Loras was staring at Renly with the same uncritically adoring look that Jaime now saw Brienne was. 

_Oh._ Jaime bristled as he realized why his chief mechanic looked more like a teenage fan than the bullheaded woman he knew. 

“Jaime Lannister,” Renly said when he noticed them. His hair was as black and smooth as the softest tires, and he had it pulled back today in a short ponytail tied with a golden ribbon. Renly was smiling, big and friendly and welcoming, and even his blue eyes seemed sincere when he looked at Brienne and held out his hand. “You're the new Lannister mechanic. Welcome to F1.” 

Jaime wanted to bite his head off when Brienne returned his smile shyly as they shook hands. “Thank you.” 

Loras looked her up and down with a raised eyebrow on his too-pretty face and then smirked at Jaime. “Casting a wide net for crew these days. Too bad it hasn't snagged you a race engineer, too.” 

“This is why you don't win races, Loras. Too busy worrying about me and not enough time worrying about why you're so bad at tire management.” 

The younger man tossed his head dramatically, his brown curls swaying around his cheeks. But before he could respond, Renly shifted and drew everyone's attention. “You look familiar,” he said to Brienne. “Not just from the WSN interview, though I admired you on that.” Brienne looked like she might internally combust from the compliment. Jaime had told her she'd looked good and he'd gotten only a perfunctory 'thank you' text. 

“I worked on your team for a bit back in F3.” 

“Really?” Renly laughed and then shrugged. “I guess that must be it. You'll forgive me, I hope, there have been so many crew through the years.” 

“It's fine,” she said demurely and Jaime wanted to shake the temper back into her. 

“We have to go,” he said abruptly. Brienne frowned at him and he glared back. “Weren't you the one telling me you had a car to finish building?” 

“Of course,” she said, and he was relieved to see she was annoyed under the confusion. 

“Nice to meet you, Brienne. Again!” Renly laughed some more, his teeth gleaming in the afternoon sun. 

Jaime imagined them falling out one by one as he and Brienne strode back to the Lannister garage in silence.

* * *

“No fucking way.”

“It's a test run, Bronn, it's not even real race engineering.”

“Then you do it.” 

Jaime grimaced as he zipped up his driver jumpsuit. After his and Brienne's encounter with Renly yesterday, Jaime had gone back to his hotel to catch up on messages and come up empty yet again on potential race engineers. Now it was officially the first day of winter testing and he was desperate. “I can't drive and sort data.”

“How have you not found a fuckin' race engineer yet?”

“I don't know, how have you not figured out how to use social media?”

“I know how to use it, I just choose not to,” Bronn said. “Hashtag cutting the cord.”

Jaime stared blandly at him. “That's not what that means.”

“Fuck off.” Bronn poked him in the chest. “My answer is still no.” He looked over Jaime's shoulder and shouted, “Chief! Our driver wants to ask you something!”

“I'm going to kill you,” he mouthed to Bronn as Brienne hurried over. Bronn just grinned. 

“Yes?” she asked. She looked harried, a handful of wrinkled papers in one fist, her gaze already sliding back to where she'd been. 

“Everything good?” Jaime asked, stalling. He imagined he could feel the rush of wind from Bronn rolling his eyes hard at his back. 

“They're getting the car started in a minute, engine's been heated and oil is prepared. There's no sign of Lancel yet, does he come in late?”

“It's not unusual on test weeks. He has the afternoon shift so he tends to make a big to do of his mornings.” Bronn slugged Jaime in the shoulder blade and Jaime yelped. “Listen,” he said, frowning briefly behind him. “I need someone to fill in for this week as a sort of race engineer while I run the test laps.”

Brienne's brow furrowed. “I suppose we can spare Bronn. I could take his spot in the pit crew for now. They were hoping to get some real practice in though.”

“Not Bronn, Wrench. You.” 

“Me what?”

“I want you to do it.” 

She laughed, a big, honking sound that Jaime wanted to hate but couldn't. “Oh,” she said, quieting down. “You're serious.” 

“Just for winter testing, and just for a few days until I get an engineer signed.”

“He has a secret list,” Bronn piped in, and Jaime briefly considered elbowing him in the stomach. 

“I...I guess I could,” she said. “Once the car's on the track I should be focused on performance but since it's just testing-”

“Exactly. Good, glad to have that settled,” Jaime rushed over her to avoid Brienne talking herself out of it again. “Looks like they're ready for me. Don't forget to get your headset connected to mine. Talk to you later.” He nearly ran for the car just a few feet away, jumped in as soon as they'd gotten her roaring and rumbling. 

Podrick strapped Jaime in, helped him get the steering wheel attached and settled, and tapped the top of Jaime's helmet when he was good to go. Someone pulled aside the privacy screen, letting sunlight and the noise of the gathered media pour into the bay and Jaime took his first official drive of the season. 

He gave a quick wave to the fans and then all his attention was on his car, the tires rolling swift and confident under him, the slight rattle of the light body. The car was made for high speeds and it felt oddly uncomfortable in these slow position drives. All the tension and worry and frustration of the seasonal break rolled off of Jaime as he pulled into the pit lane and sped up, the engine eagerly leaping into action. The cockpit was where he belonged, the steering wheel perfectly shaped to his grip, the road curving invitingly before him, and all the people who wanted things from him, things he didn't want to or couldn't give, faded away. 

When Jaime was younger, before he'd even made it into F2, he read an interview with Arthur Dayne that he'd cut out with a pair of new scissors that he'd bought along with all of Tyrion's other supplies for the upcoming school year. Dayne had been on summer break and they'd asked him if he was looking forward to going back. “Racing is life,” Dayne had said. “Anything before or after is just waiting.” Jaime had touched that slip of interview so many times over the years that the newspaper had crumbled into nothing, but he would remember those words the rest of his life. 

“Testing?”

The voice sparked unexpectedly in his ear, and Jaime's shoulders tensed before he realized it was Brienne, and his body relaxed back into the seat as he curved smoothly around the first turns going only half-speed, weaving back and forth to warm the tires. 

“Wrench,” he greeted her, smiling at the empty road. Her sigh seemed to caress his ear through the speaker. 

“Don't forget these get recorded and shared,” she said, her tone a school teacher's reprimand. 

He liked when she sounded that way. “I didn't forget, Wrench. Tires feel good, can I pick up speed?”

There was muffled conversation on the other end and then her voice alone in the car with him, strong and sure. “Go to three-quarters, take it easy on the first three turns and then press tighter on four through seven.” 

“Got it.” He did as she directed, curving slow and long on the first turns, pulling them tighter, applying the brakes harder on each consecutive turn, until he was humming along at 160 miles an hour and feeling like he was home. 

“How's she handling?” Brienne asked as he passed the pit lane again. 

“Perfectly. Can I push her harder?”

“Give it a few more full laps at this speed first. We want her to breathe a little.”

“She's happiest when she's faster.”

“Well it's the beginning of her season, too. Don't push her yet,” Brienne said firmly. 

Though he was itching to take his car to the edge, Jaime did as he was told. After two laps of silence from Brienne, Jaime said, “how do you like being a race engineer?”

“I'm not a race engineer,” she said immediately. She must have been paying close attention to his drive and not off chattering with everyone back at the garage. 

“This is what race engineers do,” he said, feeling warm. “Direct drivers, talk us down from making bad decisions. Or busting our ass when we do.” 

“Are you going to do that soon? I've been itching to yell at you,” she said, her tone unexpectedly joking. Jaime grinned around his mouthguard. 

“I see this promotion has already gone to your head.” 

“I had room, unlike some people.” 

Jaime laughed, the sound rebounding in his helmet. He wouldn't have expected Brienne to be so easy on the line, but for the next hour she wove smoothly from commanding with directions to lobbing back his bantering. By the time she called him back into the garage – “box this lap,” she said, “and try not to run over Stark on your way, he's out doing press” – he was sweating from the Dornish heat and the rumbling comfort of her voice in his ear. 

After he'd parked where directed and disconnected his steering wheel so he could step out of the car, Jaime looked immediately for Brienne, ready to continue their back-and-forth. She was standing with her back to him, still wearing the headphones and talking to Kevan. Jaime frowned. Kevan looked like he'd swallowed a bushel of lemons. 

“Everything all right, uncle?” he asked, hurrying over. He was ready to step in if Kevan was harassing Brienne for being on the headset. 

“Lancel's sick, he can't drive.”

“He can pick up extra laps tomorrow then.”

Kevan shook his head. “For two weeks. He's been hospitalized with severe food poisoning and dehydration. They think he's also got some local disease.” 

“He's been here a day,” Jaime said. “What did he get up to last night?”

His uncle glanced uncomfortably at Brienne and then back to Jaime with a nervous smile. “You know how you drivers are.”

Brienne stiffened. Jaime knew exactly what she was thinking and it galled him that it had been true once when he'd been young and foolish and wanting to fit in with the older drivers. But it wasn't true now and he needed her to know that. “Whatever do you mean, uncle? I went swimming at my hotel pool last night, had room service, and then got a full night's sleep. Is that how we are?”

Kevan's pursed lips looked like the puckered center of an orange. “It doesn't matter,” Kevan said. “What matters is you are our only available test driver.”

“I can't do six hours a day.”

“You don't have a choice. You have to step up for the team.”

“For the team?” Jaime snarled. “The team that's been happy to throw me under Lancel's wheels in order to get higher in the Constructor ratings?”

“It's the sport, Jaime. Sometimes you have to give a little so we can all win.” 

“Uncle-”

“I can do it.” Jaime stilled as Brienne spoke. 

“Pardon?” Kevan asked, not even acknowledging her with his eyes. 

“I can test drive. I have the proper license. I've done it before.”

That did bring Kevan around, and Jaime, too, to take her in and the way she'd formed into the unperturbed statue he'd met that first day back on Tarth. This woman wouldn't be stopped by the mere flesh and weak arguments of Kevan Lannister. 

“I know Tywin doesn't trust test drivers but this car has been under my oversight and I feel a great sense of responsibility and ownership for her. I'm near Jaime's size so you wouldn't have to adjust the cockpit or the ballast much either.” She lifted her chin. “I'm here already. If we try to find someone else it will waste our limited testing time.” 

Kevan's mouth opened and closed like a fish desperate for water and he looked at Jaime as though Jaime were going to argue against her. 

“Sounds like she's solved your problem,” Jaime said cheerfully.

* * *

When they relayed the news to Bronn he looked immediately like he was going to make some smartass comment, but on Jaime's stern look had instead gotten to work finding a helmet to fit her. Pod had hopped around excitedly then run off to get the car ready for Brienne's extra length. Jaime didn't begrudge her the slight adjustment she needed to the cockpit, especially since her height seemed to come mostly through her ridiculously long legs.

Kevan had wandered away muttering to himself after Jaime's pronouncement and Brienne had just stood there when Jaime told the rest of the crew as well. She was still standing there with their departure, looking more stone than skin. 

“You're not having second thoughts already are you?”

Brienne blinked and her face twisted, her big lips pulling into a disapproving grimace. Her broken nose made her look awkward, her broad forehead masculine. But her eyes were bright as stars, more compelling than her unwieldy features could ever be. 

“I'm not,” she said, and then the grimace turned back up into a small, anxious smile. “I'm excited.”

“You look terrified.”

“I'm excited,” she repeated and he suspected she was trying to convince herself that was what that feeling was. 

“We just need rotations. Stark will be on the track for awhile with you and probably Renly, too, but most of the others tend to go out for short bursts and come back again. Our practice routine is that I handle the speed tests and Lancel does the slower endurance runs. You're just taking his part.”

“What if I crash the car?” she whispered. 

“You're not going to crash the car.”

“But what if I do?”

“Brienne.” She startled, and dragged those captivating eyes away from the terrible future she was imagining back to reality with him. “If you crash the car, we'll just engage our money-back guarantee.” 

Brienne stared wide-eyed and then laughed once, a high, sharp bark, and shook her head. “You're a terrible coach,” she said, but the anxious stasis she'd gotten looped in was gone, her shoulders round and easy under her jumpsuit. 

Bronn returned with an extra helmet and mouthguard, Pod had gotten the car started again, and the two of them whisked Brienne away to get her ready. They gave her Jaime's neck protection and helped her get into the car, her big frame filling the seat even more fully than his did. He imagined her legs would have to be pulled up uncomfortably, and made a mental note to give her frequent breaks so she didn't hurt her knees. Podrick loosened the belts to get them around her body and then buckled her in securely, talking quietly to her while Brienne stared goggle-eyed out from the helmet opening. With just her eyes peering through she looked younger, and with the afternoon light bouncing off of metal and making them sparkle, he thought she could almost be beautiful. 

As he'd done with Jaime, Pod tapped Brienne's helmet, but she sat there after he'd stepped away, looking around as the car rumbled hungrily for the road. 

Bronn gestured with his hand. “Drive, for fuck's sake,” he told her and she nodded and the car jerked forward, slowed, then rolled to a smooth release speed as she headed for the pits. The media were snapping photos feverishly from outside the garage. 

“S-s-she needs someone on th-the mic.” 

“I'll do it,” Jaime said quickly, grabbing the headset she'd put down earlier. He pulled it on and tapped the microphone to life. “Wrench, can you hear me?”

There was a little startled gasp and then, “Jaime?”

“You need a guide and I figured I could return the favor. How's it feeling?” He glanced at the screen, saw her rolling slowly down the pit lane. 

“Powerful,” she breathed over the line. 

“You haven't even hit three digits yet. Give her some gas and move more quickly out of the box. I want you at a hundred by the first turn.”

“You're sure?”

“You've done this before,” he said, calm and sure. She sounded like a skittish foal, ready to bolt back for safety at the first sign of trouble. “This is no different than F3, just a little faster. Stark just went by and you've got a big clear space that has your name on it, but you've got to jump into it soon.” 

“Okay.”

She continued to drive slowly and he said, “Any time, Wr-” cut off by the car leaping suddenly forward and hurtling onto the main track. Brienne laughed breathlessly in his ear. 

“Holy shit,” she said as she took one corner and then the next. 

Jaime felt his smile go so wide his cheeks hurt. “That's more like it.” He watched the car from every angle they had on their many screens, studied her like he would any other competitor. She was slow on the corners through the first lap, and swerved too much when Renly came speeding out of the pit lane on her second, but as she settled in, he saw her pressing at the edges of the turns, exploring hers and the car's limits and comforts. The speedometer crept up to 110, 120, and Jaime let it, curious to see how far his ultra-responsible chief mechanic would take it.

At 140 he heard her mutter a curse and then the speedometer dropped back down to hover around 100 again. 

“Why, Brienne Tarth, do you have a speeding problem we should know about?”

He swore he could hear her blushing over the line. “I was just trying to keep up.” 

“You're getting two more teams on the track with you in a minute – looks like Oberyn is coming out for Sunspear first and, huh, Ramsay Bolton is driving for Golden Company.” He muted his mic and glanced over at Bronn. “Where's Harry?”

Bronn shrugged. “Haven't seen much of him since Roose Bolton bought up the company. He's pushing his son to be number one driver.” 

“Over _Harry_? He's got ten years experience on the kid.”

“The man paid for it, he can do whatever he wants,” Bronn said, shrugging. 

Jaime shook his head and unmuted. “Watch out for the Golden Co car, Bolton can be reckless.” 

“Got it,” Brienne said. “Is Griffin coming out today?” 

There was a thread in her voice Jaime couldn't peg. She sounded almost worried. “Probably.”

“Do you know who's driving for them?”

Jaime frowned at her car on the monitor. “No.” He remembered how she'd looked at Renly. “Why? Got another racing crush you want to meet?”

She was quiet for five seconds, ten, long enough that the snarky question settled like a lead balloon between them. 

“I could introduce you,” he said reluctantly. 

“No,” Brienne replied swiftly. “Forget it. I was just curious.” 

He took her through the paces for the next twenty minutes, keeping her hovering at 110, having her do some weaving as he slowed her down again. The vivid excitement of those first minutes had dissipated entirely, whether because she was focused or she was upset he couldn't tell by just her terse responses. 

“We're going to have you pit and the crew is going to treat it like it's mid-race, so just pull in and sit there until I tell you otherwise. You can show me how to stop since I'm apparently so bad at it.”

“You are,” she grumbled, but she sounded normal again so he just smirked and let it go. 

The car drove in and she stopped expertly on the line, much to his annoyance. But he still loved watching the pit crew perform their carefully synchronized chaos, even after all of these years of being in the middle of it; in mere seconds old tires were yanked off, new ones shoved on, the pneumatics whirred loudly, and the car dropped to the ground ready to roll out. Theodan, who had showed up during Brienne's laps, hit the timer and curled his lip in disgust. “Almost four seconds,” he announced. “Too slow.” 

“Car was too heavy with the new deadweight,” Martyn said, and Jaime was relieved to see none of his pit crew laugh, not even Willem, although some of Lancel's did. 

“Leave the car there and come back in. I'll take another round,” he told Brienne before he carefully laid the headset down and walked over to Martyn. 

The other man puffed up and the garage grew tense and quiet. “Chief mechanic, race engineer, now test driving,” Martyn said when Jaime was close enough. “Really sleeping- I mean skipping her way to the top, isn't she?” he drawled. 

“You know what I like about you, Martyn?” Jaime said with a casual smile. Martyn eyed him suspiciously. “I like how good it's going to feel the day I get to finally punch you in your smug fucking face.” 

“Why don't you make it today, Lannister? Or do you prefer to attack people when no one is watching?”

Jaime was ready to tear Martyn down to his brand new sneakers, but Brienne shoved her way between them. “You were slow on the pneumatic,” she told Martyn. 

“What?”

“Our pit times are still too slow and I could feel it when I was sitting in the car. Your tire went on last. They had to wait for you to let the jacks go.” 

Martyn sneered. “You're just an expert on everything in this garage, aren't you? You gonna help me piss next?”

“If it meant you wouldn't get it all over the seat every time, I might.”

There was a low rolling chuckle from the some of the other men. Jaime noted his crew was assembling behind Brienne, Lancel's behind Martyn. But he also saw media peering inside, trying to hear and see what was happening. He heard the click of a few cautious cameras, no one sure if this was going to be newsworthy or not. Kevan had disappeared, which meant it was up to Jaime to make sure it was not.

“Bronn,” he said quietly. “Go pull the privacy screen back, will you?” 

The man nodded and hurried off while Jaime re-positioned himself between Brienne and Martyn, forming a tight triangle of the three of them. 

“We'll get more reps for the pit crew this week and then do a rundown of everything over the weekend, find out our weak spots and fix them,” he said. “Martyn, you should check that your pneumatic is working like it should be.” When Martyn just stood there, eyes narrowed, Jaime said, “go. Now” in a tone that brooked no further disobedience. Though his fists wanted Martyn to push it, the man stalked off instead. 

Once the tension and the gathering had filtered away, Jaime turned to Brienne. “You're probably right with your assessment, but that was dumb.” 

“Excuse me?” she said, offended. “You were about to punch him.” 

“I wasn't,” he half-lied. “I just said I wanted to.” 

“I'm worried he's going to sabotage your chances,” she said quietly. They both looked over at Martyn, who was sullenly doing as Jaime had asked, making as much noise as possible while doing it. 

“I'll talk to Kevan but unless we can prove it, I have to keep him. Not a lot of other people willing to be on the Kingslayer's team.” 

Brienne lowered her voice even further. “Why don't you tell everyone? It's been sixteen years, I'm sure-”

“No. I don't need people's pity, if they even believe me. The IAF is just as likely to exile me as listen to me, and I don't want to give those vultures,” he gestured at the privacy screen hiding them from the media now, “any scraps. I can do this on my own.” 

“On your own with an entire fleet of people holding you up, you mean.”

Jaime tugged at his short hair in frustration. “There's only one person behind the wheel on race day. Me.”

“And your race engineer.”

He made a noise that was somewhere between disgust and despair and turned until she grabbed his arm with her strong hand. “What?” he snapped. 

“I know what happens on the track is on you. But pit stops are on me and the crew. Getting the car ready and in top shape are on us, too. You don't want to talk about it, but I know you know how important your race engineer is or you wouldn't be looking so hard. The whole race isn't on your shoulders alone.” 

“That's not what the fans and the bloggers and the sportswriters think,” he said bitterly. 

“Fuck them.” Jaime blinked, surprised. Even Martyn hadn't driven her to curse. “You can only take the car so far by yourself. Isn't that what the last few years have proven, over and over?”

“Then I guess I'm fucked,” he said on a hoarse laugh. “Because nothing has changed.”

She squeezed his arm warmly. He'd forgotten her hand was still holding him; it felt natural to have it there. “Yes it has,” she said, “you have me.” 

There was a roaring in his ears like the sound of a crowd on race day and all he could feel of his body was where Brienne still touched his arm. Her hand slid down to cradle his elbow and even through the thick fabric of his driving suit he could feel her heat pulsing through to his skin. Under his frozen stare she went red from hairline to neck and when she pulled away he swayed a little towards her. With her hand removed the roaring died down and the sounds of the garage bullied their way back in: the ring of tools, the whirring of Martyn's pneumatic, Bronn and Podrick arguing over something unimportant. 

“That probably doesn't help,” she said in a tone tight with embarrassment. “Never mind.” 

Jaime's brain wasn't working right. All he could seem to do was stare at her, marvel at the way her flushed cheeks seemed to make her remarkable eyes stand out even more. Brienne's lips thinned out as she smiled small and uncomfortably. 

“You should get back in the car. I can have Bronn on the headset this time.” 

“No,” he said, finally finding words. “I want you.” Her eyes widened and though he would have thought it impossible she went as deeply red as his car. “On the headset,” he added hastily. 

“Of, of course,” she stammered. 

She left him standing there and he didn't move at all until Bronn walked up and shoved his helmet into his chest.

* * *

By the end of the day, word had gotten around that the Lannister Chief Mechanic was doing triple duty and when Brienne pulled into the pit lane after her last lap, the area was packed with racing insiders and journalists, so many that they flooded into the onlooker staging areas of the teams next to them, Direwolf on their left, Golden Company on their right.

She wished she could just drive straight into the garage but it was far too crowded so she halted outside and focused intently on unbuckling herself and unhooking the steering wheel so she could get out. The cockpit was slightly too small for her and she was sure the pictures they would take when she had to clamber out of it were going to be mocked relentlessly all season. But then Jaime was there, helping her out and up, and watching her with a question in his eyes. 

“Brienne! Over here, please!” “Let's get some of you two and the car!” “Is Lancel coming back tomorrow or will you be driving again?” “Brienne!” “Have you driven before?” “Would you rather be a driver?” “This way, Brienne!” “Take your helmet off.” “Is this a permanent change?” “Brienne!” 

There were too many of them all talking too loudly at the same time, too many faces and arms and elbows as they shoved at the fences someone had hastily set up. Jaime patted the side of her helmet to get her attention back on him. “Go get cleaned up and come back,” he directed her through the headset he still wore, his low voice cutting through all the noise. He pushed her gently towards the garage.

“I thought you hated this part,” she said. 

“I'll manage.” He turned towards the media and gestured at his car. “Isn't she a beauty?” Brienne ducked her head and hurried inside while he distracted the crowd with his thousand watt smile and reflective charm. 

Safely ensconced in the back of the garage, Brienne pulled off her helmet and unzipped the top of her jumpsuit while she watched Jaime handle the crowd with ease. The headset was loose around his neck now, the top part of his driver suit folded down over his legs to show the standard white Nomex undershirt all drivers wore. He talked about their first day of practice, spending more time on the feel of the car, the team's hopes for the season, and their best wishes for Lancel than on Brienne. 

Pod hurried over holding out a fresh towel and water. “Y-you could escape out the p-p-paddock.”

She smiled gratefully and took the water first, gulping it down. Even though she'd been on the track this last rotation less than an hour she was sweating and slightly dehydrated. The combination of the full-body jumpsuit, thick helmet, and heat of the engine pouring into the cockpit made the interior temperature hover at dangerous temperatures, broken only by the wind whipping past as she hurtled around the track. 

“I shouldn't abandon Jaime to them,” she said once she'd downed the bottle. Brienne patted her face dry, grabbed a second water bottle Pod produced and spilled some of it over her head to slick her hair back with. She would never look good fresh off of the track – and nowhere in the same league as Jaime, who seemed suited to sweaty hair and glowing skin – but she at least wanted to not be blotchy-skinned and messy-haired when she faced the cameras again. 

Brienne squared her shoulders. “Good enough?” she asked Pod, who nodded with an encouraging smile. 

“L-let him lead,” he advised. “He hates it but he's g-g-good at this.”

She nodded and walked slowly back to Jaime and the crowd, feeling their energy turn as one towards her, like a tsunami gathering itself. 

“Brienne,” Jaime said, gesturing for her to stand at his side. “Feeling recovered?”

“Yes, thanks,” she said, hating the nerves loud in her voice. 

“Brienne!” One of the local Sunspear sports anchors was waving expectantly at her, a cameraman standing behind him. “This is your first time in Formula 1. How's it been?”

“Overwhelming,” she said truthfully, and the man chuckled. 

“How did you get picked to test drive today?”

She glanced at Jaime who fielded the question. “Myles, I answered that already. Lancel's sick and we can't hold up testing waiting for him to work all that Dornish wine out of his system.” There was scattered laughter. 

“Will you be test driving again tomorrow?” Myles directed towards Brienne agan. 

“I suppose that's up to Kevan,” she said. 

“You're also Jaime's race engineer, is that correct?”

“No,” she said, firm. Jaime tensed next to her. “I'm just helping during testing. A direct line to the driver is helpful to get a good feel for the car. So does driving it, actually.” 

“We have more work to do, guys, are we done?” Jaime asked the assembled crowed. That just seemed to spur more questions, all shouted at once. 

“Ms Tarth, please,” cut through on top of it all and Brienne scanned where the request had come from, saw Melisandre's bright red hair. She nodded at the other woman and everyone else settled down. “Thank you. My research shows you were on Griffin's team in Formula 2 but left after only a couple of months without any public reason why. What caused the abrupt departure and do you think you have the stamina to make it through an entire F1 season?”

There was an interested murmur from the gathering and Brienne could feel Jaime watching her curiously but her tongue was too thick to talk around and her throat seemed to have forgotten how to work. She wondered frantically how much Melisandre actually knew, could tell nothing from the professional blandness of the woman's smile. For a second everyone disappeared and there was only the remembered shame: a crushed rose, lips curled in disgust, mocking sneers. She should not have come here. Not to this crowd of hungry ears, not to Sunspear, not to Lannister Racing. It was safe on Tarth in her father's garage and nowhere else. 

Would they show this on repeat, too, her cut down by a simple question? 

“She'll make it through just fine,” Jaime said and she grabbed onto his voice like a lifeline. “She's out-working me and still has energy after to put up with you lot. That's enough for today.” He touched her arm gently, like she was a wounded animal, and she thought maybe she was. “We need to go to the debrief,” he said speaking slow and steady. His eyes were so warm, as green and comforting as the meadow near her home where she spent long summer days playing alone away from the schoolyard taunts of the other children. 

He led her away from the crowd who called after them, disappointed. When Brienne glanced back, the rest were leaving but Melisandre stood at the fence with a narrowed, speculative gaze.

* * *

Jaime didn't ask her what had happened and she was more grateful for that than for anything else he'd done for her so far. Instead he took the lead on the debrief, coordinating with the engineers and pit crew, making sure Martyn sat on the opposite end of the table from her, until Brienne didn't feel like everyone could see her embarrassment written on her face and she was able to participate in the discussions. They talked and argued and drew on whiteboards until someone – she suspected Podrick as he never missed a meal – had takeout brought in from a local Dornish restaurant. There were beers, too, and by the time they were done, the team was cheerful and looking forward to another busy day tomorrow.

Brienne avoided Bronn's invite to taste the nightlife in Sunspear and couldn't help smiling as he lassoed Pod into it instead, the younger man sighing but unable to hide his excited grin. 

“Eight am tomorrow,” she reminded them as they left, giving her a wave. It was dark now and even the media had given up for the night. A few other teams were filtering out, too, but except for security guards and a lone janitor, Brienne was alone. Jaime had disappeared earlier when they'd descended into the last mind-numbing details of the engine and car construction. He'd stayed much later than any driver had need to, but she still idly wondered if he'd just left to hit the clubs before everyone else. 

Though the track was closed it was still lit brightly, empty silver bleachers sparkling under the white lights. She wandered out of the garage, across the service lane and the fast lane, to the Lannister Corp gantry along the pit wall and climbed inside. The Lannister gantry had a row of six red stools with low backs, a line of computer screens below eye-level and another above, and plexiglas windows in the middle that let the crew see with their own eyes the state of the track, the weather, and how the cars were handling the road. She sat down in one of the seats that would be occupied by an engineer on race day and pressed her fingers to the glass behind which she could see the start/finish line. In a few weeks they'd be back here and racing for real, all the testing, fiddling, training, and late nights coming down to the starting lights going out and the cars all leaping forward as one ravenous pack. This was where Theodan and Jaime's race engineer would sit, along with Kevan and some of the other performance managers, to keep a close eye on the race. She'd be back in the garage with the pit crew, watching from the television screens scattered around. 

The pit wall was the best seat in the house, as close to the action as you could get without sitting in the driver's seat. _Maybe someday_, she thought, staring at the pole markings on the asphalt. 

“You did well out there, today.”

Brienne snapped her head up, saw Jaime standing at the edge of the gantry holding two cans streaked with shimmering drops of water. 

“Sorry, I thought you heard me come up,” he said.

“I was just...” she shrugged. “I didn't hear you.” She moved to get out of the seat and he motioned for her to stay, taking the seat next to her; it would likely be Theodan's on race day. 

“Ginger ale?” he asked, holding out one of the cans. “Not very dashing, I know, but I'm on race diet now and I don't want to piss off the trainers this early in the season.”

She took the offered can and they popped the tops in time, drank together in the quiet. “I didn't see you smoke all day,” she said after she'd taken a long swallow. 

“Only one piece of gum, too. The driving distracts me. I do most of my smoking in the off season.” 

“You shouldn't smoke at all.”

He rolled his eyes and she watched him take another long swallow, the way the lights beaming through the opening between the two sets of screens highlighted the sharp lines of his jaw, shadowed the curve of his throat. “You shouldn't nag people.”

“I'm not nagging.”

“You nagged me about my corners today.”

“You were reckless on four and five.” She pointed past the pit wall to where they could barely see the middle of the track. “It's just winter testing, not a real race.”

“Is that why you drove so slowly?”

“You told me to drive slowly!” She glared at him but his eyes were bright, gently teasing, and she huffed a breath. “You're very annoying,” she muttered and that only made him grin at her. 

“Why didn't you ever try driving professionally?” he asked abruptly. 

Brienne took a sip before answering. “You've been in those cockpits, it's a tight fit for me.”

He looked her body up and down and she felt her cheeks grow hot under his direct stare. “I fit,” he pointed out, “and you're not that much bigger than me. You don't need any ballast.”

Brienne snorted. “Silver linings, I guess.” She took another drink. It was so quiet out here, all future potential and past dreams swirling together in anticipation and memory. The ginger ale fizzed in her stomach. Jaime waited for her answer, patient for once. “My brother died when I was young, a few years after my mom,” she said quietly. 

“Was he a driver?”

“He was a teenager, but he'd been great at karting and he was good enough to be a test driver for some of the F3 teams even at that age. He didn't die on the track, though. He was driving a drunk friend home from a party and the brakes gave out. They'd been replaced the day before and the mechanic had fucked it up.” Her big hand, already swallowing most of the can, crunched it a little. “It's the most routine work in the world, but if you do it wrong, people can die. I thought...” she looked down, chewed on her bottom lip. 

“You thought you could protect somebody else,” he said, and she nodded at her feet. 

“It's a dumb reason.”

“It's not,” he protested. “Did you ever want to drive?”

“I did, once. I get enough from test driving when they come to Tarth. It's safer and...and I do love being a mechanic. I love having my hands elbow deep in an engine and I love solving the puzzle of finding that weird knocking sound the owner knows is there but can never make happen on command.” Her cheeks flushed again but it was pleasure now. “Being in the pit as the cars are going by, that adrenaline when we see the car rolling in, knowing we're part of what's going to get you to the end faster and safer, it's addicting.” 

“Driving is even more addicting.” 

Brienne deflated, the memory of her dad's face when they'd gotten the news about her brother as vivid as the day it had happened. “More dangerous, too. I couldn't chance it with my dad. I'm all he's got.” 

“You can't live your life for your father. Trust me, I know that better than most.” She gathered her courage to look at Jaime but he was lost in his own bitter sea. 

“I can't imagine you doing anything for anyone,” she said, trying to be light-hearted but he frowned at her and she realized belatedly she'd upset him even more. 

“I gave you a job, didn't I?”

“You needed a mechanic, that wasn't exactly a selfless act.”

“You think Renly would have given you the same opportunity if he'd needed a mechanic?” 

Brienne finished her ginger ale and stood. She didn't have the energy to deal with Jaime Lannister's moods tonight, especially not when her memories of the Griffin team had destabilized her so severely hours before. “I need to get back to the hotel,” she said. “And by the sounds of it, so do you.”

“I don't need a den mother,” he said. 

She was ready to snap back when someone just outside the gantry cleared their throat. “Um, Ms Tarth?”

A skinny young man stood there with a small notebook in his hand and a nervous smile on his face. 

“Yes?”

“Ms Tarth, my name is-”

“Peck,” Jaime said, standing next to her. “I'm here, you don't have to bother Ms Tarth.”

“Oh.” He glanced between them, his eyes darting like little fish looking for food. She'd played for hours as a child with fish like that, had laughed when they'd nibbled her fingers. This young man's fresh face reminded her of those innocent days and she felt herself liking him already. “I, I mean it's good to see you again, Mr. Lannister. But I came looking for her.”

“How can I help you...?”

“You can call me Peck. I actually was hoping you'd do something for my girlfriend. She was so excited when she heard I'd be here with you, she was beside herself when the word of your hiring got out. We've watched that interview you two did at least twenty times.” Brienne felt herself growing redder with each adoring sentiment and though she expected Jaime to be annoyed he was smiling when he nudged her. 

“You've got a fanbase,” he said happily. 

“Quiet. What can I do for your girlfriend? What's her name?”

“Pia. She'd be over the moon if you signed something for her. Probably kick me out of bed so she could sleep with it,” he said, and his roguish grin charmed her completely. 

“Of course.” Brienne glanced around, looking for something to sign, and to sign it with. 

“Here.” Jaime pulled off his Nomex undershirt and handed it to her. “That way it's a two-for-one, my shirt and your signature.” In the bright track lights Jaime's well-defined muscles looked like art being lovingly presented. _Oh gods look away_ she begged herself, forcing all of her attention on the white bundle he was holding out and determinedly not at the arm – or the bare chest the arm was attached to – that was holding it. 

Brienne grabbed the shirt and looked desperately to Peck, who patted his pockets and pulled out a Sharpie. There was nowhere to sign the shirt and as she tried to lay it flat enough in her other palm to sign, Jaime turned around and bent over slightly. 

“You can use me,” he said, his voice distressingly low with amusement. 

She licked her dry lips and laid the shirt on Jaime's broad back, felt his muscles twitch underneath her hand when she smoothed it out against him, her fingers lingering only a second too long where the shirt edge met warm skin. They were only inches apart as she leaned over a little to sign the shirt, their long bodies curved at the same angle. He smelled good this close, not the distancing cologne from the launch party but earthy and of the track, scents that triggered a flood of the best and worst moments of her life. She signed her name neatly across the chest of the t-shirt, as well as 'For Pia' and 'thank you' and then gently lifted it off of Jaime's back again and stepped out of the radiating heat of his body. Brienne folded the shirt so the words were on top before she handed it back to Peck. 

He read the inscription and smiled brightly at her. “She's going to flip out,” he said excitedly. “Thank you so much!” Peck looked like he wanted to hug her so she held out her hand, which he shook aggressively. Jaime laughed softly next to her. He had not pulled his jumpsuit up. “Thank you again, Ms Tarth. Good luck with the season. We'll be rooting for you!”

“What about me?” Jaime asked indignantly as Peck hurried away. 

“You can pull up your suit now,” she said, trying to sound disinterested. “There's no one here to impress any longer.” 

Jaime's mouth twisted. “Not even you?”

“You can't impress me with your muscles, Lannister. Only your driving.” 

“Then I guess I'll have to drive my best this season.” 

“I guess you will.” The Sunspear night was warm and humid on her suddenly sensitive skin. She could see Jaime's chest rise and fall with his breathing but even that couldn't fully distract her from the intensity of his stare, though the small drop of sweat that trickled into the hollow of his throat did its best. Brienne broke first, turning away. “I really do need to get some rest,” she said in a voice shakier than she liked. “We've got a mechanics' meeting first thing in the morning and I was hoping to get some laps in the hotel pool.” 

“Did they put you up somewhere decent?” He sounded as unaffected as she'd expect. A man like Jaime would only cause others to lose their senses, not lose them himself, especially not for a woman like her.

“Decent enough,” she said, aiming for and mostly hitting his level of ease. “Not quite as swanky as you drivers, but we don't need to be coddled.” 

“Coddled? Do you know what time I had to get up this morning to meet the physical trainer?”

“Do you know what time I had to get up this morning to work out without a physical trainer to help me?”

“You still don't like me.”

“Well, I don't _dislike_ you,” she allowed and Jaime laughed, sounding genuinely pleased. 

“I'll take it. Goodnight, Wrench.” He stood with his hands on his hips, bare shoulders glinting under the track lights. 

“Goodnight, Lannister.” 

She climbed down from the gantry and headed for the garage again and somehow resisted looking back to see if he watched her go.

* * *

The days passed quickly as more fans, the rest of the teams, and increasingly nosy journalists arrived in Sunspear for winter testing. The full weight of Lannister Corp Racing's engineering team bore down as well with suggestions, changes, critique, and so much flow-viz paint Jaime got dizzy from the fumes one afternoon.

“Then stop huffing it,” Bronn only said when Jaime complained about the fifth application to the sides that day. 

They had long hours at the track for four days and then had three days off to process everything, during which the pit crew mostly spent their hours relaxing and getting crisped at the local beaches while Jaime did photo shoots, physical training, and sessions with the engineers talking about tire management and racing modes. Then the long weekend was over, washed away under the burden of doing the engagement work of two drivers with Lancel still recovering at the hospital. Another four days of racing, studying, interviews, and signing autographs followed and winter testing ended and Jaime still did not have a designated race engineer. 

He and Brienne had taken turns driving and being each other's quasi-race engineers for all the test days, and he'd grown comfortable having her in his ear while he traveled the circuit, but she never asked to make it official and he avoided asking her in return. He felt no need to press his luck when everything was working so smoothly in this in-between state and opening day was still two more weeks away. Besides she was almost smiling at him now and she volleyed constantly with him on the headset, regardless of which one of them was driving. Jaime's favorite part of being a Formula 1 driver had always been those hours alone on the track, him and the road and the singing of his car. Even as a much younger racer he'd mostly ignored his engineers, trusting his own instincts more than their data-heavy, team-focused worldview. He'd certainly never bantered with them, and wouldn't have even considered reaching out to them first to ask their opinions. 

_Brienne is different_, he thought the last afternoon of winter testing as he watched her climb out of the car and take the towel and water from Podrick, smiling at the young man in thanks. She'd grown increasingly comfortable driving each day and she looked like a natural rubbing the towel over her hair, the thin blond strands pressed sweatily against her cheeks as they talked about her last run. 

He had, he feared, been staring at her too much the last two weeks. Ever since that night in the gantry when her eyes had grown so overwhelming he could have been swallowed whole by them; when she'd rubbed her hand over his back and he'd felt it shiver down to his feet. He'd been moved by her story about her brother; had fallen asleep that night thinking of how awful it would have been if Tyrion had died, too, leaving him with only Cersei and their father. Brienne had waded through a flood of loss already, it was no wonder she was so serious and dedicated. 

Jaime found himself eager to know more about her, to try to worm his way into her graces the same way Pod and Bronn and even the Hound had. She seemed so nervous under his attention though, and he didn't want to scare her off; it had been difficult enough attaining polite colleague status. 

But he automatically homed in on her every time he entered a room. She was inevitably the tallest person around, and he seemed to be able to hear her voice no matter where she stood. She had good input on the engineers' suggestions and whenever he needed backup on an idea he could look to her for her support, or at least her thoughtful disagreement. For as busy as Jaime was in any particular moment, he never seemed to be too far from Brienne, even if she was just in his thoughts. 

He sauntered over to her and Podrick now. “Congratulations.” 

Brienne's brow creased. “For what?”

“You completed your first Formula 1 winter testing. Now the hard work really starts.”

“They said that after car launch.”

“It doesn't get any less true.” The media scrum were calling to them and Jaime gestured their way. “Shall we do this one more time?” By silent agreement he'd managed to keep her out of these uncontrolled media opps after she'd gone as white and silent as a ghost the first day under Melisandre's questions – questions which Jaime desperately wanted the answers to, though he was willing to wait until she was ready to give them. His own research had turned up exactly what Melisandre had said: Brienne had been hired to be part of Griffin's Formula 2 team and had worked hard for just over two months only to leave the team without any public reason why. That was five years ago and she'd not been back to professional racing until now. He wondered idly if Red Connington knew what had happened. He and Hyle Hunt would have been the Griffin F2 drivers at that time. Jaime didn't care much for either man, but to be fair he didn't care much for most people in racing. 

“Brienne?” he asked. 

She took a deep breath and nodded. “I'm ready.” 

They walked over shoulder-to-shoulder and as the noise increased he could feel the tension pouring more intensely off of Brienne. He wanted to squeeze her hand to let her know he'd handle it, but she'd likely bolt if he did, so he took a half step ahead and smiled for the cameras. He and the media hated each other, but at least they could all be civil about it. 

“Everyone have a good winter testing?” he asked them. There was a cheerful response from the crowd of journalists and fans, and he saw Peck shoving his way near the front. 

“Peck,” he said, “you first.”

The reporters from the more established orgs looked annoyed but Peck flipped open his little notebook and got his pen ready. “How do you feel about the car this season, Mr. Lannister?”

“The engineers and mechanics have done an incredible job making an already fast machine even faster. The handling is smooth and she rides better than ever. I feel they've put us in a great position to win. Myles.”

“Have you talked to Lancel?”

“I've been letting him recover. We want him ready for race day, he didn't need me hovering around.” Jaime felt fairly certain his smile looked sincere and not forced, but he couldn't resist adding, “I need someone to block Stark around the corners for me after all.” 

Melisandre waved her hand and Jaime shot Brienne a quick glance before nodding at the WSN reporter. “What's on your mind?” he asked her. 

“You had an unusual winter testing given you still have no race engineer. It's getting awfully close to the first lights out to not have one. Are you going without this year? I've heard reports you may have a secret list you're picking from.”

Jaime could hear Bronn laughing at him in his head, could feel Brienne waiting for his response. They'd had two productive weeks working together, and she hadn't said no outright when he'd referenced the idea back on that first day. She did not, in fact, dislike him and he liked having someone on the team that acted like his equal and not a fearful subordinate or angry competition. Bronn, as much as Jaime hated to admit it, had been right from the start: she was his perfect match as a race engineer. It felt like such a natural resolution to the problem that fighting it only embarrassed him now in retrospect. Never one for small gestures, Jaime smiled at Melisandre and said, “Brienne Tarth will be my race engineer.” 

When he turned to grin at her, he saw her pale face had gone completely white, her mouth dropped open in shock. He felt like one of those poor idiots who asked their girlfriend to marry them on the Jumbotron and she clearly was saying no in front of fifty thousand people. 

“Does she know that?” Melisandre asked wryly. 

“I, I, uh,” Brienne blinked furiously and Jaime could feel the fragile foundation they'd built start to crumble away like sand. 

“We haven't worked out the details yet,” Jaime said, smiling with a smooth confidence he in no way felt. “She is after all my chief mechanic, too, but she's done good work as both roles this preseason and it doesn't make sense to overturn a smoothly sailing boat, does it?” 

“Mm,” Melisandre said, still watching Brienne's reaction. Jaime couldn't do the same, was afraid if he did he'd see she was furious with him and he'd hated that feeling back at the launch party. He had no other secrets to lay bare for her that would mitigate the fact that he was still a selfish asshole. 

“Speaking of which, we have our final day debrief we need to get to. Thanks everyone, we look forward to seeing you at the opening race!” Jaime spun on his heel and walked away, hoping Brienne would just follow, relieved when she did. He ignored Bronn's knowing smirk as they stalked by him on the way to the paddock. 

Jaime and Brienne both silently accepted the pats of congratulations as they wove their way through the crew until Brienne grabbed his arm and yanked him into an empty meeting room and slammed the door. 

“What the fuck?” she demanded. Jaime swallowed and forced himself to look at her. Her mouth was twisted tightly and though her eyes were startlingly bright under the fluorescent lights she didn't look upset so much as in nervous shock. 

“You've been doing it for two weeks now.”

“You said it was just for testing! What happened to your list?”

“I went through it weeks ago. No one wants to put up with me,” he said, trying to keep things light. 

“What makes you think I want to do it?”

Jaime teetered on a knife edge, knowing if he said the bitter words that poured from the wound in his heart he chanced driving her away for good. He grit his teeth and forced the cruelty back for once in his foolish life, instead reaching for the much more vulnerable truth. “I need a person I can trust,” he said, not quite able to meet her gaze. “I trust you.” 

It was quiet then, an expectant pause that pressed against his tongue, made him want to rush forward with denials and insults to fill the space and form a protective moat between them. 

Brienne spoke first. “I need to think about it,” she said and Jaime exhaled softly. 

“All right. I'll need to know soon,” he said. 

“That's fair.” She fidgeted with the zipper of her jumpsuit. “What if I say no?”

“Then you remain as chief mechanic and I figure out something else.” 

“You won't fire me?”

He frowned. “Of course not.”

Some fear he hadn't noticed in her suddenly eased and she relaxed before him, dropping her hands to the side. “Then I'll think seriously about it. Though I don't know why you'd want me, I have no training or experience. Surely there must be someone else like me you could find.”

“There are no others like you, Brienne.” She flushed and he had the urge to see if her skin was warm under the redness that somehow made her freckles more prominent. That would certainly send her running, if not punching him deservedly in the face. He willed his hand to stillness at his side. 

“They're waiting for us at the debriefing,” she said weakly. 

“Of course. I'll handle any questions about the race engineer position.”

“Try not to commit me to anything else.” She gave him a brief, wry smile that put him at ease. 

He opened the door and gestured for her to precede him. “After you, my lady.” 

“I think I prefer 'Wrench',” she muttered as she walked by, going red again. Jaime just grinned at her back and tried to ignore the hope fluttering in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arthur Dayne's "racing is life" quote comes from current F1 Redbull driver Max Verstappen, who is in many ways what 17-19 year old F1 driver Jaime Lannister was probably like. Also I just realized today that posting on Sundays means I'm posting on race days, which feels appropriate.


	6. March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd answered on the second ring, though his voice was groggy. “Wrench?”
> 
> The clock had read 9:33pm. “Are you sleeping?”
> 
> “I'm old, so sue me.” She heard him shifting around and studiously did not picture him lying tousled in bed, probably only in very expensive underwear. “Is something wrong?”
> 
> Unless he slept naked, his body long and golden on silk sheets. “No, it can wait,” she'd said hurriedly. 
> 
> “I'm already awake, you may as well not waste the fact you pulled me from a perfectly good dream. Unless you'd like me to tell you about it?” His voice, even warmer through the phone than through the crackling headset of the car, shivered down her spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a few days early this week as I won't have time on Sunday. I didn't finish writing my chapter for the week, but I'm gambling on myself being productive over the US holiday coming up (and also I've got the next five chapters done so I've got some buffer). 
> 
> Thank you all for your lovely comments so far! I honestly will go back and read them a couple times in-between posting chapters to keep my energy up, it means a lot. <3
> 
> ALSO, don't miss this gorgeous edit private-witt on tumblr made for the story! I love it so much.  
https://private-witt.tumblr.com/post/189173016503/heart-full-of-gasoline-by-ajoblotofjunk-jaime

The flags representing each team snapped brightly in the wind, overseeing the massive crowds that had descended on Sunspear for the first race of the season. 

Brienne had been to races before, mostly at the lower levels although her father had sprung for a trip years ago to King's Landing that she'd never forget, to watch the final Formula 1 race of the season. They'd been swept up in the pageantry and sheer size of it all and had settled at one of the track corners where you could lay out a blanket and make a day of it. Brienne still remembered the feel of the wind as the cars had sped by, the happy chattering of families all around them. She'd watched dozens of races on television as well, so the number of people should not have surprised her, but viewing them from pit level was an entirely different experience. 

Sunspear held eighty thousand people scattered along the full length of its track, and there were at least another five thousand with VIP access camped out in the middle greenery. The roar reminded her of the ocean on a stormy day, swelling and crashing in a rhythm only nature could predict. There were whole sections coordinated in the colors of each team, their logos on shirts, hats, jackets, even people's faces: a bellowing golden lion for Lannister Corp, a snarling white wolf for Team Direwolf, the surprisingly ferocious kraken waving its arms on the black of Kraken Team's flags. The greatest number were the red suns burning across a sea of gold waving in the breeze, representing the home team of Sunspear Racing. 

Oberyn and his teammate, Addam Marbrand, had been out doing FanZone meet and greets most of the morning and the drivers from other teams were using some of their pre-race time to meet fans in their colors at the fences, signing autographs and taking selfies. Jaime was one of the few who didn't; he just gave a perfunctory wave as he hurried by and disappeared into the garage. Brienne intended to go with him – some of the jeers from the already-drunk male fans were loud in her ears – except she couldn't ignore the small group of teen girls screaming her name even more loudly. 

When Brienne wandered over they were beside themselves with excitement. 

“Oh my gods, we love you!” one girl squealed as she held out her racing day program. Brienne blushed and quickly signed it.

“I can't believe you're a race engineer, I always wanted to be one but I never thought it would happen,” another said, who bent over so Brienne could sign the back of her shirt. 

“Keep at it,” Brienne said as she carefully signed 'Brienne Tarth' so it was legible. “A woman can do anything in Formula 1.” 

The girls beamed at her, and Brienne felt their energy coursing through her until she was smiling back at them, not caring how she looked when she did. One of the girls stuck out her arm and held out a permanent marker. 

“Please sign my arm, Ms Tarth?” she asked, eyes wide. 

“I suppose. But don't tattoo it. You're much too young and tattooing someone's name on your body is a guarantee for disaster.” 

“Do you have a name tattoo?” one girl asked just as another one said, “do you have a boyfriend?”

Brienne shook her head briefly as she was signing. “I don't have either.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

She smiled a little. “No. I have my work. It keeps me very busy.” She didn't bother to add that she'd never had a significant other; no sense telling the girls what they would surmise themselves later just by recalling how she looked, how she moved. 

After the girls thanked her and wished her luck, Brienne turned to find Jaime leaning against the opening to the garage and watching her with eyes lit with a pride that she assumed was for himself for picking her in the first place. 

The night after Jaime had presumptively announced she'd be his race engineer, Brienne had called her father from her hotel room. He'd been relentlessly in favor of it, of course, claiming it only made sense. 

“I can't be a real race engineer!” she'd protested. “I don't have an advanced degree. I don't have experience. I don't understand all the data they talk about. I just know driving and the car.”

“That's all you need to know,” he'd said. 

“Don't be silly, Dad. Lannister knows more than I do about these things. And he's much better handling the cameras in his face all the time. He should be his own race engineer.” Even as she said the words, Brienne had been struck by a sharp bolt of inspiration. “I'll call you back later,” she'd said abruptly to her father, before dialing Jaime. 

He'd answered on the second ring, though his voice was groggy. “Wrench?”

The clock had read 9:33pm. “Are you sleeping?”

“I'm old, so sue me.” She heard him shifting around and studiously did not picture him lying tousled in bed, probably only in very expensive underwear. “Is something wrong?”

Unless he slept naked, his body long and golden on silk sheets. “No, it can wait,” she'd said hurriedly. 

“I'm already awake, you may as well not waste the fact you pulled me from a perfectly good dream. Unless you'd like me to tell you about it?” His voice, even warmer through the phone than through the crackling headset of the car, shivered down her spine. 

“Absolutely not,” she'd said, throttling the pleasant shiver to a halt. Jaime chuckled low on the other line. “It's about being your race engineer.”

“Oh?” He sounded hesitant. 

“I have conditions.” 

“I see.”

“We have to share the responsibility. I simply don't have the experience and knowledge to be a good race engineer right now, no matter how desperate you are for one. But I can help make decisions for you, help with track walks and planning, configurations of the car. I won't do any pre- or post-race media sit-downs, though.” 

“That's fair, though I don't know if I can promise you won't do _any_. How am I supposed to parse all the rest when I'm also busy driving?”

“I don't know that yet. We'll have to work it out. Maybe pick the things that matter most to you and ignore everything else.”

There was a loud snort over the phone. “Father and Kevan will love that.”

“I don't really care,” she'd said, and Jaime had been quiet for a long, heavy moment. “Of course I'll work with the team,” she'd added. “But as your race engineer I care about _your_ race.”

“Those conditions will work just fine,” he'd said, all the teasing and haughty confidence gone from his tone. 

“You're going to have to find a new Chief Mechanic. I recommend Bronn; he's doing a lot of that work anyway.”

“No, I want it to be you.”

“Lannister, I can't-”

“You can. We'll shift some things to him but you can do it. You can do anything, Brienne Tarth. I fully believe that.” 

Brienne was certain he could hear her blushing through the phone. “Well, all right. We can try. But if I'm doing both, I expect to be paid more.” 

Jaime had laughed then, a happy cascade that didn't make her feel foolish, but appreciated. “I'll work it out with my father first thing tomorrow. We're keeping the money back guarantee, though.”

“If you must.” Brienne had smiled into the speaker. “I suppose that's all for now, then.”

“I suppose so.” 

She'd been oddly reluctant to let him go, but she had nothing else to say that couldn't wait for tomorrow, and the two weeks they had until the first race of the season. “I hope you get back to your dream.” 

“I suspect I will,” he'd said, his voice as smooth as a casual drive on a sunny day. 

They'd spent the two weeks since side-by-side for hours each day, working through shorthand, plans, the information Jaime needed and what Brienne felt comfortable providing, and always coming back to the car and how to get to the brink of performance without pushing too far. 

In qualifying the previous day, they'd gone over that edge and Jaime had been out in Q1, starting at position 18 on race day. He'd been cranky that evening, disappearing after a terse interview with the media. She'd not seen much of him this morning either and having him watching her with the girls now she could only stare at her feet so she wouldn't have to see any scorn for her newbie ways. 

“The fan club grows,” he said as she strode past him behind the privacy screen. 

“At least I stop for mine,” she muttered. She knew he heard because he went stiff and straight, but he headed for his personal room at the back instead of engaging. “Don't forget driver's parade” she'd called after him, but he didn't even slow down to acknowledge her. 

“How's it going, Chief?” That was Bronn, currently overseeing some last preparatory activities to get the car ready to start. 

“Do you have fans?” she asked curiously. 

Bronn smirked. “A few. I don't sign autographs, but I do leave them happy.” 

Brienne rolled her eyes and Podrick came up next to them. “D-don't listen to him. H-h-his biggest fan is his m-m-mom.”

“You're a real smartass this year, you know that? I don't like it.” 

“M-maybe you sh-shouldn't have t-t-taught me then.”

“I don't think it was my doing at all.” He gave Brienne a significant look.

“Me?” She said, genuinely surprised. “I didn't teach him to be like that.”

“You didn't have to. His snarkiness goes up in direct relation to whether you're nearby or not. Seems young Podrick uses his tongue as a shield, dented though it might be.”

When she glanced at Pod, he was red, his round cheeks looking like two small apples. “I-I-I can stop if you w-w-w-want,” he told her. 

“I think it's very sweet,” she said, squeezing his shoulder gently. “Besides, gods know Bronn of all people deserves it.” 

“That's very unfair. I'm a fuckin' paragon of virtue.”

“Then I'm not sure you understand what either paragon or virtue mean.” 

Bronn grinned at her and clapped her on the back. “You've loosened up. Just make sure you give Jaime as much shit as you do us or he'll get insufferable during the season. Remember Steelshanks Walton?” Pod groaned and nodded. On Brienne's confused look Bronn added, “he was Jaime's race engineer, what, two years ago? All the different ones run together a bit. They didn't get along and he never tried to advise Jaime, just let him run whatever race he wanted, except for when Kevan came down like a ton of bricks on them both. I could barely keep from punching Jaime in the face most races with how hard he was on the car. He retired from more races that season than any other. He goes too hard when someone isn't reigning him in.”

“Has anyone ever successfully reigned him in?”

Bronn's mouth twisted, his brow furrowing. “Come to think of it, no.” He shrugged. “Well, good luck.”

He and Pod deserted her for their work, Bronn's careless well-wishes popping like bubbles. 

Surely he was just messing with her. 

Nonetheless she headed for Jaime's driver room and knocked once on the closed door with a pit in her stomach, opening it before he could say anything. He glared at her from the small couch when she entered.

“What do you want?” he said around a huge mouthful of gum. 

“How many pieces are you chewing?”

“Four sticks. I used to smoke before races to calm down. One piece wasn't working.” She had no idea how he managed to get words out when there was so much gum in the way. 

“That's disgusting,” she said. 

He smiled, his cheeks puffed out on either side like a chipmunk. “You're the one who barged in here. I could have been naked.” 

“I would have preferred that,” she muttered, but that only made his misshapen smirk widen. “I came to remind you that I am your race engineer, so you have to listen to me today.”

Jaime grabbed a nearby tissue and calmly spit out the gum wad, balling it up. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I won't be like Walton.” 

“You've been talking to Bronn.” 

“Maybe.”

He gave her an unimpressed side-eye and threw the gum ball away. “Did Bronn also tell you that the only time Steelshanks ever gave me advice that didn't come from Kevan, he suggested I try to push Stark into the apron at turn four when there wasn't an apron there and it would have caused a crash or worse?”

“He didn't,” she admitted.

“I'll listen to you,” Jaime said, “because I trust you're smarter than Steelshanks.” He stood then, folding his arms across his chest; his tight undershirt clung to his muscles. “Don't prove me wrong.”

“What if I tell you something you don't want to hear?”

“I guess we'll have to see what happens, won't we?” he said, his voice low. Brienne searched his eyes, as green and distant as the old-growth forests in the valleys of Tarth; and as filled with a long and sometimes painful history. 

There was a knock on the door and Brienne took a step back as Jaime said “come in” without looking away from her. 

Tywin Lannister opened the door and glanced between them. “Were you meeting?”

“Just working out a few last details. Come to wish me luck?”

“From eighteenth position? Luck wouldn't help you even if you had an experienced race engineer.” Tywin's face held nothing but disdain, not just for her, but for his own son. 

“At least you can be on your way again now that you've done your disappointed fathering.” Jaime turned his back on Tywin, bent to grab an energy drink from the small fridge next to the couch. 

“I came to talk to you about your role on this team. I had thought to talk to you alone, but it will be good for her to hear it, too.” Tywin didn't even spare her a glance as he continued. “Lancel is our focus this year. Our strategy lies with him.”

“Your strategy is going for last in the Constructor Championship?”

“You have been an inconsistent mess since you came back to F1.”

Brienne shifted, ready to leap in but Jaime cut her a look that stilled her. “I'm the best driver on the field and you know it,” he said, turning angry eyes to Tywin. 

“The best driver on the field would have a World Championship by now.” 

Jaime's whole body went tight, she could see the muscles of his forearm straining. “If you'd have put the weight of this team behind me even once-”

“I've done it the last four years and you have squandered it every time.”

“Are you sure you're not getting confused with my time in karting? That's the last time I remember you actively supporting me.”

Tywin's lip curled. “I would have done it your first time in Formula One if you hadn't gone with the Targaryens.”

“Ah, the great betrayal. It always comes back to that.” This had the feel of an argument whose tracks were so well-worn they'd gotten stuck in them. “Would you be less mad at me if you'd just had a chance to beat me when I was with Dragonfire?”

“Why do you always think I'm mad at you? You had everything – the privilege of a racing family, natural talent, a love for the sport that pushed you further. And here you are now, with that woman and your crew of throwaways and you expect me to take you seriously enough to be angry?”

Brienne swallowed down the fury she felt simmering low and hot in her chest when she met Jaime's gaze just over Tywin's shoulder and saw the single, small shake of his head. Every line in his face seemed to have been carved deeper just from this one conversation; she didn't want to make it worse for him, but she wasn't going to be able to remain quiet much longer. She wondered if the elder Lannister even remembered she was still there.

“Get out,” Jaime spat at Tywin. 

Tywin half-turned towards the door and jolted a little when he saw Brienne was still standing just behind him. She planted her feet, glaring at him as he waited for her to get out of his way. She would have stood there until the last race of the season had ended rather than give him ground, but he merely smirked – a shadow of Jaime's own, harder and colder by far – and moved around her. Tywin stepped out the door and then looked back at both of them. 

“The team is behind Lancel. The strategy will be for him and if you know what's good for your career, you'll support it.” He slammed the door behind him, leaving his suffocating contempt with them in the small room. 

As though ropes that had been binding him were suddenly loosed, Jaime spun and threw his energy drink hard at the far wall where the plastic exploded and red liquid splashed as bright as fresh blood all over the publicity posters from seasons past, dripping to the floor. 

“FUCK!” he shouted, his hands tangling in his hair and pulling tight for a minute. “Fuck that fucking cocksucker!” 

Any of the ease and excitement she had seen in Jaime in the last few weeks was entirely gone and he reminded her of a caged lion, pacing and furious and trapped. If he carried this with him to the track it would be a disaster. Had Tywin known this would be his response? Could he have done this on purpose to his own son? 

“Jaime,” she said, quiet and calm. Jaime kept pacing back and forth, muttering curses, but he looked her way with eyes so bright she wondered if he was on the verge of tears. She had to get him back from this dark edge. “We can get you into points position today.”

That brought him to a halt, eyeing her warily. “I'm starting at p-18.”

“By turn three you'll be in p-12.”

Jaime looked at her like she'd sprouted her own set of racing wings. “That's impossible.”

“It wasn't impossible for Arthur Dayne. I thought you were as good as him?”

He looked mad still, but focused now, not chaos on the brink of spiraling out of control. “I am.”

“He did it, here, in his fifth season. You've got both Nightfort and Dothrak cars right in front of you, and your car has better acceleration than any of theirs so that gets you to P-14 before you even hit the first turn. Hyle Hunt,” she managed to get his name out without her voice shaking, “is in front of them and he always takes turns too wide, so if you get on the inside of him you'll be in P-13 by turn 1, turn 2 if needed. Daario is after that and he drives too aggressively whenever he's not in the top ten. By turn three he'll have locked his wheels at least once and you can pass him.” 

Jaime had gone entirely silent and was staring at her like she'd saved him from drowning. Brienne flushed and looked away. It was easier to withstand him when the whole of his emotions were held back by the wall of sarcasm and detachment; like this he was almost unbearably attractive, the hard lines of his bitterness softened into something appealing and warm. 

“Fuck,” he said again, but this time it was quiet and he sounded impressed. 

“Anyone could see it,” she said haltingly. 

“No, not anyone. You.” Jaime shifted closer. 

There was another knock on the door and Brienne quickly said “come in!” 

It was Bronn, who glanced between them and lifted an eyebrow. “Time for driver's parade and then you need to get suited up, weighed, and in the car and we need Chief to go over a few last items.”

Brienne nodded and followed after Bronn, though she hesitated at the door. “Don't listen to Tywin,” she said, glancing back at Jaime. “Listen to me. You can do this.” 

Jaime smiled a little, an endearingly uncertain twist of his lips. “I believe you.”

* * *

Jaime was restless and distracted after Brienne left with Bronn, but not because of what his father had said – those were words he'd heard before even if they never stung any less with repetition. He was unable to stop thinking about Brienne, about the fierce fight in her astonishing eyes when Tywin had been there, how Jaime had known she would have done something foolish just because she was mad on his behalf. It was not the first time, either, which meant it was just who Brienne was and that was something he couldn't seem to get his mind around. What kind of person would throw away their entire dream – even after she'd been so oddly adorable signing autographs for those girls – for a disgraced driver whose own team wasn't even behind him?

It was the kind of person that fit in more awkwardly with Lannister Racing than an actual alien would have. The kind of person that Jaime had thought Arthur Dayne had been, before Aerys had shown that people like that didn't actually exist, they were all made up by carefully controlled media and money paid to the right people at the right time. The kind of person that should have nothing to do with Jaime Lannister. 

Jaime went through his pre-race regimen in silence, from the interminable drive around the track for the traditional drivers' parade, waving at the fans while ignoring the scattered conversations and barely hidden contempt of the competition; to standing in line to get weighed per regulations; to putting on his safety equipment, his earpiece, and his flame retardant head covering without snarking at Bronn once. When Jaime pulled his helmet on the noise of the garage went muffled and with the visor down his isolation was complete; hi-tech plastic and fabric in layer after layer separating him from the world, cocooning him with just his thoughts and the steadily growing excitement. Race day was an adrenaline surge unlike any other and climbing into the car, pulling out onto the grid to get into position was like a roller coaster clacking its way up the first hill, except this roller coaster was entirely under his control. 

He parked at p-18, got out to survey the long double line of cars he'd have to get through just to get to tenth and a single point in the standings. The engineers swarmed over his car one more time and Jaime fought the familiar snarl that always lingered in his throat when they came to tweak and touch her one last time before it was just him and the car once more. He scanned the area for Brienne, found her surrounded by engineers, too, the men talking at her while she studied something on one of the screens in the gantry and made notes. 

Someone tapped Jaime's helmet and Bronn was there, pointing at the car. “Formation lap,” he said and Jaime climbed back in as the crew pulled the tire covers off and scattered like ants blown away by a strong wind. 

The safety car led the field one last time around the track, every driver weaving their rumbling race cars back and forth to warm up the tires, engines all straining like horses eager to go faster. 

“Radio check,” Brienne said in his ear, sounding nervous. He felt the tension in his shoulders ease a little at her voice. 

“I hear you, Wrench. Ready for this?”

“Are you?”

“I'm always ready for race day.” That was as real and true as the thrumming beat of his heart. 

“Remember what we talked about. Points today, even if it's just one.” 

He nodded a little and the cars returned to their positions at the grid and the tens of thousands of fans went quiet, a thick, tense hush laying like a blanket over everything. The crews had retreated to the garages and the gantries, and the starting lights became the only markers in Jaime's world. He revved the engine as each circle lit up one by one, held his breath in the endless stretch of waiting for lights out, and then exhaled explosively when they did and the entire field leapt forward as one to start the season. 

The first lap of the race went exactly as Brienne had predicted, though Daario locked up around the second turn, not the third, and Jaime had passed him even sooner than she'd suspected. 

“Great job,” she said as he started his second lap. “Let's get to tenth.” 

Lancel had started at p-3 so Kevan seemed willing to leave Jaime to run whatever race he wanted from his position at the back, Brienne's information coming without any interference from the Lannister Corp team in the cadences they had worked out. Jaime had told her he only ever cared about who was in front of him unless he was in first, so she gave him a constant reminder of who the next two cars were at the start of each lap or when he passed someone. She shared track conditions, including a surprisingly alert early notice about marbles from Daario's overly aggressive cornering that was slowly shredding his tires onto the road. Jaime hit p-10 thirteen laps in and Brienne cheered in his ear. 

When he fought to ninth four laps later she nearly deafened him with her shout of excitement. Jaime gritted his teeth around his mouthpiece and watched Loras' car fall behind him. 

Halfway through the race he had battled his way to p-7 and she called him in for a pit stop. “Box this lap,” she urged even as he crept up on Renly Baratheon ahead of him. 

“I've almost got him.” 

“And your tires are nearly done. Box now and you'll get the advantage. None of the cars in front of you have gone in yet. With how you're running today you might even have a shot at podium if we do this right.” 

He ignored the instruction. His tires were fine and he was determined to show her he could pass Renly, that he was better than this driver that Brienne turned into a shy flower over. “Not yet,” he said, pushing harder. 

She exhaled loudly into the mic and it sounded like the storm he knew would be waiting for him at the end of the race. Jaime gave Renly a small wave when he passed him on the next lap. 

Ten laps later, his tires shot, Renly soared by him on fresh tires and returned the wave. When Brienne ordered him again to box, Jaime pulled in without protest, and they had him back on the road a little over three seconds after he'd stopped, but he'd fallen back to p-10. 

“You've still got points,” Brienne reminded him as he tore out of the pit lanes to rejoin the race. 

“I want more.” 

“Just make it to the end of the race. Twenty laps left.” 

“Anyone else still need to go in?” 

“Stark and Renly both already did, and so did Lancel. But there are a few ahead of you who haven't, you may have a chance there,” she allowed.

Jaime's fingers tightened on the wheel.

The last twenty laps passed in the familiar tunnel vision that every race he'd ever been in came down to. The world didn't shrink so much as disappear, an indistinct blur on either side of him, the dark asphalt and bright sky ahead the only things he focused on, occasionally disrupted by one of his competitor's cars as colorful and unique as birds, and as easily devoured. Even Brienne had gone mostly quiet in his helmet, just announcing who he was coming up on and how many laps were left in a steady countdown. 

“Last lap,” she said eventually and there was excitement in the simple words. 

He gave the car even more power, pushing her as hard as he could, willing her to just a little more, just a little longer. Euron Greyjoy was ahead of him in his black and gold Kraken. He'd pitted two laps earlier than Jaime had and even that small amount of wear was enough. 

“You've got him,” Brienne urged breathlessly as Jaime crept nearer. Euron swerved trying to cut off his pass and Jaime fell back a little before pressing again. When Euron made the exact same maneuver on the second attack, Jaime smiled to himself. He fell back one more time before surging forward a third time and as soon as Euron started his same protective swerve Jaime was already in the space he was abandoning to try to block Jaime's car; Jaime used the DRS and jumped ahead of Euron. 

“Yes!” Brienne cheered. “Well done!” 

Jaime smiled, feeling warm and accomplished, and as he crossed the finish line with Euron still behind him Brienne said, her voice as light as a young girl's, “well you got points.” 

He slowed for the cool-down lap and the world came rushing back around him, snapping into place. People were cheering, and some of them seemed to be cheering _him_. “Where did I end up?”

“P-5.”

“You're shitting me.” Even Dayne hadn't made that jump; he'd only gotten to p-6. 

But Brienne was laughing, a cheerful waterfall of noise that filled his head, washed through his whole body and pushed out the tension as he took the corners gently and headed for the parc fermé. He banged the side of his car in excitement, and then smoothed his hand over her as apology. Jaime muted the mic and whispered, “awesome job, girl.” 

When he finally got out of the car and pulled off his helmet and protective covering he had drivers hovering around him as though he were one of the podium sitters. 

“Spectacular racing today,” Renly said, clapping him on the shoulder. Even Loras nodded in agreement. The Dothrak team both pounded Jaime on the back before heading over to the top three. Renly was flashing the blindingly bright smile that suggested that all that was between them was camaraderie and not years of Loras hissing _Kingslayer_ and Renly ignoring Jaime entirely. 

“Tell your race engineer thanks for having you box late. You might've beat me, too, if you'd gone sooner,” Renly smirked.

“She did want me to go sooner,” Jaime said. “So you have me to thank.”

Renly laughed and slapped his shoulder again. “Jaime Lannister admitting fault. Will wonders never cease?” He and Loras left him then, too, and Jaime noticed Addam standing a distance away, in between him and the group of actual winners. They had been close as brothers once, before Aerys and the turning point around which every good thing in his life had twisted and disappeared, even his best friend. 

They hadn't even talked directly to each other since last year, when they'd ended up at an interview table together and avoided questions about their friendship growing up in karting circles and how that friendship had faded in the intervening years. Once their shared interview had been over, Addam had tried to talk to him but Jaime had been in the middle of a slump brought on by penalties and bad decisions and all he had to give was bitterness. On the asphalt now, Addam just stared at him before leaving the track. It was better than the angry hurt from their last conversation, Jaime supposed. 

He turned to the top three, Robb, Oberyn, and Lancel, who were still accepting congratulations from their crews and the other drivers. Jaime ignored his own teammate and walked directly to Robb, who watched his approach without smiling. The last time they'd talked had been last year's season finale, and Jaime had been as sharp and cruel as his father. 

“Lannister,” Robb said. “Only fifth for you.” 

“I'll take the thirteen spot jump.”

“Maybe if you qualify better you'll be with me on the podium by the end of the season. You can help me celebrate my world championship.”

“It's only the first race of the season, and yet you're so certain of a championship.” 

“The only thing I'm certain of is I can beat you every time, Kingslayer.” 

Jaime felt the dark tendrils creeping out of his heart. _Kingslayer. A man without honor. The most penalized driver in IAF history._ He thought of Brienne laughing happily as he'd crossed the finish line. “I've got nineteen more races to prove you wrong,” he said, pushing the bitter response away. Jaime smiled and tapped his forehead jauntily before heading for the post-race weigh-in and rehydration rooms. For once, he knew Robb Stark's silence was surprise, not fury.

* * *

Brienne's hands were stinging from the amount of high-fives she'd given the rest of the crew after Jaime's remarkable climb to fifth. She'd believed he could make tenth, but any more than that seemed miraculous. What it really was was Jaime's skill, the team's work on the car, a little bit of luck and, she thought allowing herself a brief indulgence, her support getting him the information and engine configurations he needed to make the most of what he took on the track.

It was bright out in the lanes where all the pit crews had emerged, talking and laughing, calling out insults and congratulations to other teams. Brienne had been dreading this part for days now, because all the race engineers were congregating in one area to wait for the drivers while the pit crews mingled somewhere else. It was a boys' club filled with men who either didn't know her and didn't care to or already disliked her because she wasn't one of them. Theodan was there, talking with Oberyn's engineer, but when he saw Brienne he immediately looked away without including her. They'd talked not at all during the race, even though they sat next to each other in the gantry. He hadn't been cruel, he'd just acted as though she didn't even exist. 

But Theodan was the least of her worries. She would take his purposeful indifference over the jagged-edged swords Griffin's engineers had wielded against her in F2. Seeing them again – Dunsen who worked with Red Connington, Ambrose with Hyle Hunt – Brienne's stomach twisted into a mess of sharp pains and sharper memories. She'd been on Connington's team, but that hadn't stopped Hyle's from taking their own interest in her as well. This was what had kept her up most of last night: the anticipation not just of seeing all of them again since she'd left so hurriedly years ago, but having to talk to them like none of it mattered because there were media swarming in the crowd as determined and obnoxious as ants and as eager for any morsel they could find. Brienne refused to let her past humiliation become the story of her time with Lannister Corp Racing. 

There was a flash of red hair and she sucked in her breath, holding it tight until the crowds cleared and she could see it wasn't Connington at all, but a man almost as tall as her and easily as broad, with a big, bushy beard that seemed anxious to grow out into the world. He was wearing a Direwolf Racing jumpsuit and a shockingly vulgar leer on his face as he looked her up and down. Brienne glanced around, looking for someone to attach herself to so she wouldn't have to talk to this man, when a much shorter distraction caught her eyes. It was a young woman with grey eyes, brown hair, and a stubborn chin, and she was marching directly for Brienne. 

The young woman halted and stared up at Brienne with eyes much more calculating than her youthful features would suggest. 

“You're that Lannister mechanic-turned-engineer,” she stated matter-of-factly. 

“I am. I'm sorry, who are you?”

“Arya Stark.” Arya stuck out her hand and Brienne shook it, found her slender fingers were surprisingly strong. 

“Related to Robb Stark?”

“His sister. What are you doing working for Lannister Corp?”

Brienne decided to respond as directly as Arya had asked the question. “Your brother's team wouldn't hire me.”

Arya sighed, a sharp, exasperated sound that Brienne found oddly charming, though she hid her smile. She suspected Arya Stark would not appreciate being found charming. “He's an idiot. I'll have to go knock some sense into him.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “I'm glad you're here in F1, even if it's for the wrong team.”

“I'm happy to be here.”

They stared at each other, a mismatched pair – Arya short and dark, Brienne tall and pale. She could hear cameras clicking and knew the headlines would somehow reference the two women from rival teams as being in a catfight even though they were only talking. 

“Do you work on your brother's crew?” Brienne asked, genuinely curious. 

“Work for Robb?” Arya laughed darkly. “Not with _his_ sponsors. I do work for Direwolf, though. Engineering intern. I'm graduating from college this year with my degree.”

“It must be nice to have a family already in racing.”

“I don't want to work for them. People will think I only got the job because I'm a Stark. They already think that about the internship.”

Brienne nodded in commiseration. “Everyone thinks I only got this job because I'm a woman.”

“Fuckers. Seeing you here gives me hope that maybe someday we'll have an all-girls Formula 1 racing team. We can have some make-up brand as our sponsor. Paint the whole thing purple and slap lipstick kisses all over it.” 

A laugh bubbled out of Brienne's constricted chest and she forgot about Hyle and Connington and even Jaime for a moment. “Gods can you imagine? They'd let us by because they were afraid to be seen next to our car.”

Arya's lips twisted into a sharp wolf's grin. “We'd destroy them.”

“Destroy who?” Jaime asked, coming up on them unexpectedly. Brienne's face went hot and she glanced at Arya, but Arya was facing him down with the same undaunted confidence with which she'd approached Brienne. 

“You,” the young woman said, lifting her chin. 

Jaime smirked at her. “You Starks are so full of confidence for so little reason.”

“I forget, who won the World Championship _and_ Constructor's Championship last year?” Jaime's smirk slipped and seemed to suddenly appear on Arya's face. “Just wait until we hang tampon curtains as our privacy screens,” she added knowingly. “Good luck, Brienne, though not too much luck. We'll talk later. Not a lot of us women here on the asphalt.” 

Brienne bid Arya goodbye and she and Jaime watched her go with their arms crossed over their chests in mirrored poses. Jaime leaned a little towards Brienne and asked, confused, “tampon curtains?”

“Don't worry about it.” She turned to face him, and was caught by the beaming light in his green eyes. “Congratulations! You did it.” 

Jaime raised his eyebrows. “We did it. You were exactly right about the race start. I wouldn't have gotten those first positions if it weren't for you.” 

There were cameras all over, official racing team employees whose sole job was to document every moment of the season, as well as the usual army of media on the lookout for news. From the number of them swarming nearby, they had found some here. A video camera was a few feet away, filming them. 

Brienne knew she was red and sweaty and she scrambled for something to say to get Jaime's and the cameras' attention off of her. “You could have passed Renly, too, if you'd pitted earlier.” 

That had clearly not been the right thing by the way Jaime's face fell and then hardened into much more familiar lines. “Yes, well,” he said, running his hand through his hair and making it somehow look even better, “you need to get the team faster at the pit stop.”

“We were under four seconds.”

“Everyone ahead of me is under three.” 

“Lannister-”

“Jaime,” Kevan interrupted, walking up to them. He gave the cameras a significant look and Brienne ducked her head nervously. “That was a good run. You earned some unexpected points for the team.”

“I earned them for myself,” Jaime said between clenched teeth. 

“I'm sure you'd keep them from us if you could,” Kevan said dryly. 

“I'll make that recommendation for next year's regulation changes.”

Kevan rolled his eyes and turned to Brienne. “You were right about the pit stop. Hopefully your driver will listen to you next time. We can talk more at the debrief.” He gestured at the cameras. “No need to give all our secrets away, eh?” The journalists laughed a little, a knowing murmur that did not feel entirely friendly. 

“We'll pick this up later, Wrench,” Jaime said, turning from the cameras' hungry eyes. With his back to most of them he said in a voice directed just to her under the din, “head for the paddock. Media's more tightly controlled there.” 

He moved off with Kevan and though most of the media followed after, Melisandre remained behind. “Brienne, how was your first race?”

Melisandre had asked it casually, but Brienne noted that her phone was recording. “It was exciting,” Brienne said. 

“Were you disappointed to see Lancel back in action?”

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“You did get to drive for him in winter testing. Were you hoping you'd get the chance to race professionally?” 

Brienne couldn't even dignify that with an answer. “I should get back for the debrief.”

“I talked with some of the folks from Griffin,” Melisandre said quickly, and Brienne's insides went to concrete. “They remember you working there, but they won't comment on your departure. Would you like to address it?”

“No,” Brienne said through dry lips. 

Melisandre hit a button on her phone. “I will find out,” she said, not unkindly. “Wouldn't you rather control the message yourself?”

“Why does it matter? It was years ago. It wasn't even F1!” 

“Your past makes you who you are today. Surely you must recognize that, given who your driver is.” 

“Jaime isn't just his past. You saw him drive today.” 

“He was unusually controlled. Not like him at all.”

Brienne frowned. “He drove smart and when the situation called for it he pressed the edges.”

“This was one race against years of evidence he is not this man.”

“I know he is,” Brienne said, too fast and too fierce. Melisandre lifted her perfectly styled eyebrows and then glanced down at her phone. When Brienne followed her gaze, she saw that Melisandre had been recording the whole time. “I have no further comments.” 

“I don't need any,” Melisandre said and then did turn the recording app off, smiling warmly at Brienne as though they were good friends. “You still owe me that sit-down interview,” she said.

“What?”

“You promised at the beginning of the season. I'll be in touch. Good luck on your next race!” 

Brienne could only stare, dumbfounded, as Melisandre headed to the group clustered around the Stag Motor drivers. She looked around for someone to share her confusion with, but she was alone, a wide circle around her as everyone else talked with media or friends or friendly rivals from other teams. Most of the Lannister Corp, Direwolf, and Sunspear crews were all out by the podium waiting for their drivers to be awarded for first, second, and third place and the people left here were already planning for parties that night that she wouldn't be a part of before heading home tomorrow. 

She brought out her phone and thought about calling her dad to anchor her when she felt someone watching. Brienne looked up and saw Hyle Hunt, his plain features twisted in consideration, and she froze under his stare, knowing she was going red and unable to do anything about it. But he just nodded and then turned back to his companions, leaving her blessedly alone. 

Brienne breathed a shaky sigh of relief and escaped, finally, to the paddock where she waited in the quiet for everyone to return and tried not to think about the last time she had seen Hyle.

* * *

By Tuesday everyone was back to work and busier than ever. Brienne spent most of the day stuck in the engineering room listening to them argue over how much a .1 degree of angle adjustment on the front wing would make to the car's speed. She cared about the answer in theory, but the practicality of figuring it out was slowly driving her mad.

That evening she wandered back to her cubicle with her brain still trying to dig out of the avalanche of numbers they'd given her, and when she saw Jaime's light was on she walked in without knocking to commiserate with him. As she did, she heard her own voice saying, “I know he is,” before Jaime slammed his laptop closed. 

Brienne halted abruptly. “Sorry, I should have knocked.” 

“It's fine. I thought you weren't doing interviews?”

“I didn't know she was still recording,” she said, her cheeks heating. Jaime looked down at his closed laptop, one hand smoothing over the top of it. “Was it a video?”

“No, podcast.”

“Well, that's good at least.” 

“Did you need something?” 

Brienne shifted awkwardly as she realized she didn't, really. She'd just come in to share her afternoon with Jaime because she knew he'd understand; he'd make some snarky comment that she never would have put words to and it would have been just right, funny and not too mean, a release valve for the stress of their long hours day after day. “I, uh,” she said, “was just seeing if you needed anything. I was going to head home.” 

Jaime glanced to the practical black sports watch that still looked expensive on his strong, tanned wrist. “Eight pm and going home already, that's early for you isn't it?” He grinned, taking the sting out of it. 

“I thought I'd see how drivers live,” she said and his grin widened. “Goodnight, Lannister.”

“Goodnight, Wrench.” She was halfway through the door when he said, “wait, I do have one thing.” Brienne looked back at him. “Did you mean it? What you told her?”

She thought about what she'd said to Melisandre when she thought no one else had been listening. “I did.” 

Jaime nodded, like he'd expected that answer and yet it still surprised him, and she closed his door softly behind her.

* * *

Brienne had thought the two weeks between Sunspear and the second race in Myr would be leisurely compared to races later in the season where they would have only one week between, but she hadn't counted on the fact that the team used the extra week and weekend to pack in more work on the car, more practice in the pit, more interviews and fan meet-ups and planning for mid-season when the days would come even faster and harder and preparation made all the difference.

Not to mention they had to fly this time instead of drive because this race was across the water, which complicated everything: plane tickets, hotels, transporting the car to and from the airport. It was a logistical nightmare of which Brienne had only a small part and still she was exhausted by it. But she had never been to Myr before and though she was weary stepping off the plane, it was quickly overtaken by excitement. 

Myr was a city of artisans and fisherman; a more advanced and worldly mirror of Tarth in its way, though here there were a hundred religious institutions, whereas on Tarth most people either worshipped the Seven or the sea, or both. The pageantry of Formula 1 had gripped the city and they'd rolled out literal red carpets for the arriving teams. Each member of the crew was given a small sample of Myrish lace with their team's logo worked in the middle of it. Bronn grunted at his and asked for wine instead, and the woman handing out the samples had only smiled and promised there would be plenty of wine later. As they were escorted to the Lannister Corp bus, Brienne heard the strains of “Seasons of My Love,” a song by what was likely Myr's most famous export, the pop star Serala Darklyn. That song had been everywhere five years ago, even on Tarth, and she was not surprised to find they were still embracing it today. Serala didn't put Myr on the map – they'd been famous for their lace and their glass and their spiced wine long before that – but she did drag them into the present and remind Westeros that popular culture didn't stop on their shores. 

That hour between getting off the plane and getting on the bus for their hotel was the most she saw of Myr for the next few days until after the Saturday qualifying runs, when Lannister Corp held their first team dinner of the season. They'd bought out one of their famous restaurants on the waterfront, _The Spirit of Myr_, renowned for its fresh seafood. The owners had cleared out the entire bottom floor and put in several large tables, as well as a few standing tables around the edges for appetizers ahead of time. They'd hung golden lights all around the room and were piping in classical Westerosi music. 

Brienne smoothed down her black cocktail dress as she walked in, Podrick and Bronn on either side of her. The team had all been bussed from the hotel to the restaurant, everyone dressed in party wear. Podrick was wearing black suit pants, a white shirt, and a badly-tied deep red tie while Bronn was in a well-worn brown suit she imagined he had just for occasions like this. 

“I'm not gonna re-tie it,” Bronn said for the third time, completely avoiding Podrick's big puppy eyes. “You're old enough to know how by now.” 

“M-my mum couldn't teach me and you know my d-d-dad isn't around.” 

“Your sob story is no reason to not know how to tie a tie,” Bronn grumbled, but he yanked Podrick near by the arm and went to work. “I'm not doing it next time,” he said, even as Pod looked at Brienne and winked at her. 

She caught sight of Jaime on the other side of the room, looking aristocratic and handsome in his sleek navy-colored suit and jacket, the white of his shirt bringing out the brightness of his smile. He looked over and caught her watching him, patted the arm of the man he was chatting with – she thought he was one of the executives she tried to mostly stay away from – and headed their way. 

“You clean up nice, Wrench,” Jaime said when he'd neared.

Brienne's face grew hot. “It's the same dress I wore at the last party,” she said. 

“I was a lot drunker at that party,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed. “Wearing the same thing has never stopped Bronn, anyway,” he added. Bronn stuck his middle finger up and beelined for the bar. Podrick straightened his perfectly tied tie and nodded at Jaime and Brienne before going the opposite direction to the appetizers. 

“Are there many of these events? I didn't exactly pack for parties.”

“Not for you,” Jaime said, gesturing for her to follow him to the bar as well. “I have a whole rack in my closet just for suits for all the functions I have to go to, though. My father demands elegance in everything we do. Wine or cocktail?” 

“Wine, I guess. White.” 

Jaime ordered a glass of white wine for her and red for himself and tipped the bartender when he presented the drinks. “My father isn't even in Myr. But he has to make his presence felt.” 

“He must have been overbearing to grow up with.” 

He snorted. “You could say that. Here, you can ask my brother.” He gestured with his wine glass at Tyrion who was headed their way. 

“Brienne Tarth,” Tyrion said gaily. He took her big hand in his two smaller ones and kissed the top. “What a pleasure to see you again. Rumor has it you played quite the role in my brother's good fortune last week.” 

“Well, he did the driving.” 

“Humble, too. How refreshing.” Tyrion ordered two more glasses of the red. 

“Thirsty tonight?” Jaime asked.

“No, just preparing for Cersei.” 

Jaime glanced up at the door and groaned. “Shouldn't she be with her husband's team?”

“And miss an opportunity to prove herself useful to father as a spy?” Tyrion asked, droll. 

Brienne took a sip of her wine and looked around for an excuse to leave, but Cersei had seen them already and leaving before she said hello to the other woman walking towards them would likely look even worse. She took a bigger drink of her wine to steady herself. 

“Jaime,” Cersei said, kissing his cheek. “Tyrion.” He just smiled at her and held out the full glass of wine which she took with an arched eyebrow. 

“And you,” Cersei said to Brienne, “I've entirely forgotten your name.” 

Brienne gritted her teeth and managed a tight-lipped smile. “Brienne,” she said. “Have we met before?”

Cersei's perfect red lips twisted upward in what might have passed for a genuine smile if her eyes hadn't been so dark and hard. “Cersei Lannister-Baratheon. You must have been quite drunk the last time we met, no wonder you've forgotten.” 

“Cersei,” Jaime said, his voice a warning. 

“You've climbed your way up the ladder since the launch party,” Cersei went on, ignoring him. “Race engineer now. What a remarkable leap.” 

“She's earned it,” Jaime jumped in. 

“I'm sure she has,” Cersei said in a tone that suggested Brienne had earned it in his bed. Brienne swallowed down her anger and the last of her wine, and set her glass down on the bar. 

“I'm hungry,” she said and Tyrion took her hand immediately. 

“Let me introduce you to the best appetizers money can buy.” Tyrion tugged her away, leaving Jaime and Cersei behind. “I'm sorry about our sister,” he said quietly when they were over by a plate heaped with beautifully prepared oysters. 

“Is she always like that?”

“Terrifying and cruel? Yes.” He selected an oyster and sucked it down. “At least in my experience.” 

Brienne watched Cersei and Jaime talking, the tight line of Jaime's jaw, the unhappy tilt of his mouth. “His experience, too, from the look of it.” 

“He tells me she wasn't always this way, just since I was born, so I really couldn't say. But even if she was at one time not awful, that time has long passed even for him.” 

“Then why does he still talk to her?”

Tyrion took another oyster. “She's his twin. He thinks the person she was is still in there.”

_Because the person he was is still in him_, Brienne thought. She glanced at Tyrion and his mismatched eyes were calculating. “How are the oysters?”

“Delicious.” He handed her one on a napkin. “You should try them. They're quite the aphrodisiac.” 

She nearly choked on the one she'd been eating. “What?”

“Surely you have some eager Myrish hunk waiting for you? They're very _devoted_ fans here.”

“Gods, no,” she said, crumpling up her napkin. “Me? No. What? No.” 

Tyrion grinned at her. “One 'no' would have sufficed.” 

“How could you think that? Look at me.” 

“Look at me,” he retorted. “You think I don't have a woman waiting for me back at the hotel?”

Brienne gaped at him and the host for the evening called them all to the tables for dinner. Tyrion winked at her and gestured to the tables. “Dinner awaits, my lady,” he said. 

They filtered over and negotiated for seats, Brienne ending up with Tyrion on one side and Podrick on the other, with Bronn, Willem, and Martyn across from them. Jaime and Cersei had ended up at a completely different table with Lancel, Kevan, and the rest of the executives. As the first course of lobster bisque was served, she leaned over to Tyrion. 

“Don't you want to sit at the table with Kevan and the others?”

“Absolutely not. This table is much more my speed. Besides, then I wouldn't be able to sit near you.” 

Brienne offered a small, uncomfortable smile. Tyrion was flirtatious, had been both times they'd met, but it felt insincere, an effect he automatically put on instead of just talking. “Jaime and I were speaking about your father earlier,” she said, trying to skip past the useless flirting. 

Tyrion's spoon hesitated on his way to his mouth before he finished slurping down his bisque. “My sincere apologies.” 

“Your father is quite a force.” 

“That's not the f word I would have used.” He nodded at the server to clear his small bowl away and covered her hand with his. “What about you, Brienne? Jaime tells me he found you on Tarth. I assume given your name that's a family legacy. Were you born on the island as well?” 

“Yes. I've lived there my whole life. Until now I suppose.” 

“A rarity.” 

She shrugged. “Islanders tend to stay close to home.” 

“Do you have any brothers or sisters? Hopefully better ones than mine.” 

Brienne glanced at the other table again, saw Jaime was intent on his bisque while Cersei, Kevan, and Lancel talked around him. “I did,” she said quietly. “My brother, Galladon, died when I was younger.” 

“I'm sorry,” he said sincerely. “Do you remember him?”

“I do.” Brienne let the server clear her bowl and place a salad with small shrimp scattered on top in front of her. “Not as much as I want to, though.” 

“I know the feeling,” Tyrion said. He stared distantly at his salad for a moment before smiling brightly up at her. “Let's not ruin our meal with useless regrets. You sound like you need more wine.” Tyrion gestured for the sommelier, who came back with a bottle of white, poured them each a glass and set it down on the table. 

“I'll be taking that,” Bronn said happily, drinking straight out of the bottle. 

“B-B-Bronn,” Podrick complained. “I didn't get any.” 

“You can still have some,” he said, holding the bottle out to Podrick, who grimaced and waved it off. 

They cheerfully bickered and talked through the salad, main course, and into dessert, Tyrion throwing in with them repeatedly, even Willem getting in on it. Martyn spent most of his meal talking with the other end of the table, but Brienne caught him glaring at her once or twice before quickly looking away again. 

She only met Jaime's eyes once, just after dessert was set down and Brienne had taken a bite, her eyes sliding closed as the rich triple chocolate mousse cake melted on her tongue. When she looked around to share her glee, she caught Jaime staring right at her with bright eyes. He smirked and touched the side of his mouth with the tip of his finger. Brienne wiped at her own mouth in the same place, found chocolate there that she cleaned off hurriedly on her napkin, knowing she was blushing again. She mouthed 'thank you' silently to him and he blinked, licked his lips, and nodded at her before Cersei tugged on his arm, drawing his attention away.

Kevan stood, clinking his knife loudly against his glass. Once they'd all quieted down he said, “Thank you all for coming to the first team dinner of the racing season!” There was a small round of applause in response. “As you know, Tywin couldn't make it for the trip to Myr but he wishes you all a good race tomorrow. We're in excellent position thanks to our drivers' qualifying runs today. Jaime of course is starting at p-5 and Lancel is at p-2.” The applause was louder that time. “We just wanted to thank you all for your hard work to get us to the start of the season, and we'll have another one of these at the end in King's Landing to celebrate winning the Constructor's Championship!” That set the room off in a loud series of cheers and hollering, Brienne joining them. “Hope you all enjoyed your meal. Make sure you finish up as we'll be heading back to the hotels soon for the night.”

“Finally!” Amory Lorch belched, the engineers around him laughing. 

“Yes I'm sure many of you have other engagements waiting,” Kevan acknowledged. Brienne grimaced at the lecherous grin on Amory's face. “We still have a race day tomorrow, though, so I hope you all, especially our drivers, won't be up _too_ late.” Lancel accepted the executives' back pats with a sly smile; Jaime just seemed annoyed by the whole thing. 

“Alright everyone, what do we say at Lannister Corp?”

“Hear us roar!” they shouted back, except her part of the table which was much quieter. 

“Embarrassing,” Tyrion muttered, downing yet another glass of wine. “Well, I don't have to wait for the bus, so I am off to my...engagement a little early.” He pushed his chair back and gave Brienne a short bow. “You should take advantage of the very friendly people of Myr, Brienne. They won't disappoint you.” He gave her a sideways smile and wandered off, waving to Jaime and ignoring Cersei entirely on his way out. 

“How he gets so many women is a damned mystery,” Bronn said. 

“Because of how he looks?”

“Because of what a puffed up prick he is.” 

Brienne snorted. “He doesn't seem as puffed up or as much of a prick as some people.” 

“Are you insulting our driver? Because if you are, you're absolutely right.” 

She hadn't been, she realized. Jaime had an ego, that was true, but the more time she spent with him the more she realized he wasn't a prick so much as sharp-tongued and angry with good reason, softened occasionally by his love of the sport. “I was talking about Tywin,” she said, pitching it just for Bronn, who laughed loudly. 

“You're learning, Chief. Hey Pod, what did Tywin say about you when you first arrived?”

“Th-that my hands w-w-were slower than my tongue.” 

“That was it! Gods that man can cut a person down faster than anyone I've ever met. Cersei's a close second. Miracle that Jaime and Tyrion turned out even half as normal as they did. Normal by Lannister standards, at least.” 

“Do my ears deceive me?” Jaime said in a deep, amused voice from behind Brienne. She straightened at the sound and the belated waft of his expensive cologne. “Is Bronn Blackwater complimenting me?”

“Don't let it go to your head, it was only in comparison to Tywin.” 

“Say no more.” Jaime took the seat Tyrion had left open next to Brienne. “Did you enjoy the rest of your meal or just the dessert?” he asked, grinning. There was some color in his cheeks from the wine he'd had, and he leaned back in his chair, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone, his eyes glinting. 

Brienne flushed and folded her hands on top of the table. “It was all fine.” 

“Fine? This is the best restaurant in the city. Chefs pay to interview here.” 

She shrugged. “I prefer the seafood on Tarth,” she admitted. “It's simpler but it's more my taste.” 

“Simple over extravagant, hm? That sounds like you, Wrench.” 

“Everyone is allowed their opinions, Lannister.” 

“I was allowing you yours, even as wrong as they are.” 

Brienne glared at him. “I would put the best place on Tarth up against here any day.” 

“You're that confident?”

“I am. I'll take you sometime so you can see.” 

“I'd like that,” he said and Brienne's brain rewound what her mouth had angrily offered, and she couldn't meet his amused smile for another second. 

“Not that we'll have time,” she said hastily. “In fact we should probably get back now. Want to be well-rested for tomorrow.” 

“No 'engagements' for you tonight?” Jaime asked, watching her. He was still leaning back in his chair looking relaxed, though his voice wasn't. 

“Of course not,” she mumbled. “I expect you do though.” 

“You expect a lot of things about me that are wrong.” He stood and winked at her. “I won't begrudge you this one, though. I am quite handsome.”

Brienne closed her eyes and laughed softly. “Gods, I take back what I said about you not being as puffed up as your father.” When she opened her eyes again he was still smiling, but it looked strained. 

“I better leave before I'm even more of a disappointment, then,” he said. He inclined his head and turned to go and Brienne was left with the feeling she'd hurt him, though she wasn't sure how.

* * *

On Sunday Jaime showed up at the track on time and with a professional smile and he seemingly managed to avoid her until she knocked on the door of his ready room.

“Ready for race day?” he asked when she entered. 

“Yes. I thought we could talk about your strategy one more time.” 

“If you want.” He made space for her to sit on the opposite chair and engaged attentively with her on the plan. Then he checked the time and said he was sorry but he needed to get ready for the race and he'd check in again before he got in the car. It was all very pleasant and felt entirely wrong. Jaime wasn't _pleasant_. He was obnoxious and stubborn and demanding and decidedly not pleasant. Brienne stood outside his room wondering what the hell had just happened. 

There wasn't time to worry about it as the pre-race routine kicked into high gear. Before she could take a breath again he was already weaving back and forth on the formation lap. 

“Radio check,” she said. 

“I hear you.” 

“Good luck today.”

“I don't need luck,” he said and there was the arrogance she was familiar with. Brienne smiled in spite of herself. 

“Not when you have me,” she agreed, relieved when he laughed low. 

There was ultimately a little luck involved; Jaime was penalized three seconds in the pit after a reckless move that Brienne bit her tongue on but filed away for the post-race debrief, and a crash by Lancel in the last ten laps brought out the yellow flag and saved Jaime from losing any of his previous advantage, which meant he still managed to come in p-3 this time, his first podium finish of the season. The pit crew rushed out to the barriers to meet him as the top three – Oberyn in p-1, followed by Robb and Jaime – came in to the parc fermé and parked behind their position signs. 

Jaime climbed up out of his car and shook his fists excitedly, before heading over to the crew to high-five them, except for Pod who gripped him around the waist and squeezed. When Jaime got to Brienne he lifted up the shield covering his eyes and she was struck by the way they shone, the edges crinkling with happiness. 

“Well done,” she said and he nodded. They didn't hug or high-five or even shake hands, they just beamed at each other until Kevan shoved forward for a fist-bump Jaime returned unenthusiastically. 

“I'll see you from the podium,” Jaime said, muffled through the helmet, before Kevan ushered him off to get water, weighed, and cleaned up before the ceremony. Brienne high-fived Bronn and Podrick again and then went with them to the crew area in front of the high stage where the top three would receive their race trophies and champagne. 

“You may want to stay farther back if you don't want to get sprayed,” Bronn warned her and Brienne recalled how often drivers would drench the entire crew instead of just each other with the huge champagne bottles. She nodded and lingered at the back, out of reach of all but the most aggressive droplets and waited eagerly for the ceremony to begin. 

“Brienne?” someone said, and she turned to find Hyle standing there, his plain face smiling. 

“Hyle,” she breathed, glancing around. “What are you doing here?”

“Just watching the ceremony. I usually do from back here. Don't like to get wet unless I'm the one doing the spraying.” He was so nonchalant, as though he hadn't been a part of her humiliating retreat from Griffin. 

“What are you doing here by me?” she insisted. 

“Saying hello, I thought. It's been awhile.” 

_That isn't _my_ fault_, she wanted to yell at him, but she just nodded. 

He glanced up at the still-empty podium and then back to her. “Congratulations on your role. Seems you two are a good team.” 

“We're doing fine,” she said. 

“Good. It's good to see you again.” 

“Is it?”

“Of course.” He frowned, like he was confused by her reticence. “The ceremony will start soon and I'm sure you'll want to enjoy your first podium experience. We'll have to talk later.” 

Brienne remained quiet and Hyle half-shrugged and wandered back to where a few of the other drivers were gathered around. She tried not to stare at them but she couldn't help wonder if their quiet conversation was about her. If he was telling them how he knew her, the cruel trick he'd been a part of. If they would laugh even now at the ridiculous girl she'd been, someone in her early twenties who still believed a man might be interested in her even though she looked as she did, even though her entire past suggested that was absurd. 

She didn't stay to find out, instead watching the ceremony on one of the TVs inside the paddock where Hyle and the memories that trailed him couldn't quite reach.


	7. April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime forced himself to watch the road and not the woman – _my race engineer_ he reminded himself – next to him. He'd had to do that more frequently lately, especially since dinner in Myr two weeks ago. He was fairly certain he'd never seen anyone shift so quickly from unwittingly sexy to incredibly adorable as fast as she had eating that dessert, and whenever he had a moment that wasn't jam-packed he would find himself thinking about the way her eyes had fluttered closed and her mouth had gone slack with pleasure. Sometimes even when he should have very obviously been thinking about anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been so enjoying the sudden flurry of fic updates from my JB subscriptions that I figured I'd join in on the fun of Ficsgiving and post early again this week for those who may need the distraction or have the extra time for fic reading (US readers, I'm looking at you). Also this is one of *my* favorite chapters and I've been looking forward to sharing it, and I finished this week's chapter AND managed to miraculously avoid tragic computer/story loss from an unexpected hard drive failure this week so I'm enjoying the win. This is, so far (I'm six chapters ahead in writing this), the shortest chapter, but it's still 6k. I hope you enjoy. :)

“It'll be fun,” Jaime said, waving the box under Brienne's nose. “It's not like we have anything else to do today.” 

She gestured to the two-inch stack of printouts she was going through, each page more densely packed with numbers and notes than the last. Jaime made a face. 

“There's not one thing in there that's going to make a bit of difference on the track tomorrow. They red-flagged quals, we've put the sandbags up in the garage, and now the whole day awaits us.” 

Brienne sighed. “But why _that_?”

“Would you rather go bowling with the crew?” He could tell immediately by the way her nose scrunched up that the answer was no, but she pretended to consider it. 

“Is there beer?”

“I can get beer,” he scoffed. “Gulltown's finest. I mean you can sit alone in your hotel room staring at page after page of,” he squinted at the upside down papers, “restructuring of the intake to increase aerodynamic flow as measured in pounds per square inch, or you could come build a really cool model of Dayne's first championship car with me.” He shook the box under her nose again, the pieces clicking together cheerfully. 

“You're still very annoying,” she grumbled, but she gathered up her papers and tucked them into her big shoulder bag. 

“I'll even let you talk about the strategy for tomorrow if you let me do all four wheels.”

“Gods,” she laughed. “Fine, it's a deal.” 

The local driver they called to come take them to the hotel greeted them with a silent glare as they hustled into his backseat, water dripping everywhere. It was already a downpour in Gulltown and the worst of the storm hadn't even hit yet. If Jaime hadn't talked Brienne into it in the next fifteen minutes, they might have just been stuck at the track. He rubbed his hands over his head, slicking back his hair, and glanced at her in the seat next to him doing the same. The tip of her nose was red from the cold and her pale lashes looked dark and long with the rainwater, making her blue eyes glow. 

Jaime forced himself to watch the road and not the woman – _my race engineer_ he reminded himself – next to him. He'd had to do that more frequently lately, especially since dinner in Myr two weeks ago. He was fairly certain he'd never seen anyone shift so quickly from unwittingly sexy to incredibly adorable as fast as she had eating that dessert, and whenever he had a moment that wasn't jam-packed he would find himself thinking about the way her eyes had fluttered closed and her mouth had gone slack with pleasure. Sometimes even when he should have very obviously been thinking about anything else. 

Fortunately for both of them, he was still Jaime Lannister, disgraced Formula 1 driver that was little better than his father, and she was the extremely dedicated and hard-working Brienne Tarth, which meant there was no awkward sexual tension on her part so he could tuck his away more easily. Or so he'd thought until free practice yesterday when she'd done her first radio check early in the morning and he'd almost weaved his car right into the wall in surprise. Had her voice always been that husky? 

Jaime stared out at the rain running in a solid sheet down the window and wondered what the fuck he was doing inviting her to his hotel room to build a model car, except he was actually looking forward to it. They'd both been running non-stop since Myr – since well before, really – and it would be a good opportunity for him to get to know her better. A solid relationship between a driver and his race engineer could make or break the chance for p-1 and though he knew Brienne had a brother who'd died and she _really_ liked triple chocolate mousse cake, he didn't know much else about her, while she knew the biggest secret he had.

He tipped the driver quadruple for the mess and the trouble, signed the back of an old envelope the man had when he realized who Jaime was, and then ushered Brienne into the fancy hotel lobby and up to his room on the top floor. The elevators were glass-fronted and she stood looking out as their elevator rose without stopping, her marvelous eyes round as she took it all in. 

“This is a lot nicer than the crew hotel,” she said when the elevator dinged pleasantly and the doors opened to a quiet floor with only three doors: one to the left, one to the right, and one at the end of the hall. 

“This floor is a lot nicer than the rest of the hotel,” he admitted. He went to the left door and then pointed with his thumb behind them. “Lancel's in there. Kevan's at the end of the hall.” 

“This entire space is just for you?” she said as she walked into the living room with its L-shaped overstuffed couch, elegant glass coffee table, and huge TV screen. There were two other doors inside, one for the large bathroom and one for the bedroom that was probably the size of her entire hotel room. 

“Kevan likes the drivers to be comfortable,” he said defensively. 

“I'm sure you like it too.” Brienne went to the huge picture window and looked out on the waterfront of Gulltown. 

“It's hard to turn down the view,” he agreed, coming to stand near her at the window. The rain and heavy clouds hid much of it, but Jaime could make out the gray swirl of the sea, a few ships bobbing dangerously in their berths. 

“Reminds me of Tarth.”

“Which part?”

Brienne pressed her fingers to the glass briefly, leaving a smudge behind. “The storm. My dad used to take Gal and I to the top of Evenfall Hill in storms like this. 'It's just water' he'd tell us, no matter how cold it was or how hard the wind was blowing. 'We're surrounded by water you can't be afraid of it.'” Brienne looked at Jaime and her eyes reminded him of the sky, not the sea; as vast and warm and deep blue as the middle of summer. “We stopped doing it after Gal died. We stopped doing a lot of things.”

“It sounds like you have good memories, though.” 

“I do,” she said, and she smiled a little and set her balled up jumpsuit down on the nearby table, the long-sleeved shirt she'd been wearing underneath stuck by rainwater to every line of her muscled torso. “I'm dripping all over this very plush carpet.”

He grabbed two large, indecently fluffy towels from the bathroom and the two bathrobes as well and came back. “You can change into this if you want or you can just use the towel, whatever you like.” 

Jaime tried not to be disappointed when she only took the towel, but he followed suit, patting himself dry and then sitting on the couch in slightly damp jeans. “You ready for this?” he said as he poured out the pieces from the box onto the coffee table. 

“That's a lot more pieces than I thought it would be.” She grabbed the instructions. “Do you have all this other stuff, too? A hobby knife, paint brushes, sandpaper?”

He reached around the edge of the couch and brought out a plastic bag loaded with modeling tools and set it down on the table. “Ta-dah.” 

“Then let's get to work.”

Brienne immediately started pulling all of the tools out of the bag and organizing them on the tabletop while Jaime started trying to fit pieces together. 

“You can't start building until everything's prepared. What if we're missing something important?”

“That's very diligent of you,” he said, tugging the instruction sheet to his side. 

“I wasn't done with that.” She tugged it back her way. 

“It's my model.” 

“For Sevens' sake, are you eight years old?” 

Jaime glared at her but he let her finish her preparation until she indicated they had all the pieces they needed and they could get started building. 

“Have you always been like this?” he asked as he finally started cementing the inside of the car together. 

“Have you?” 

“Answer my question first, Wrench, and then I'll answer yours.” He focused intently on the car, the perfect tiny details of the seat and the chassis. 

“As far as I can remember I have,” she said, sanding off the next piece for him so it fit smoothly. “I was a little more reckless before Gal died, but I was also a child. That comes with the territory.” 

He slid his gaze to her briefly before focusing on the car again. “I can't even picture you as a child, let alone a reckless one.” 

“What, I just stepped straight out the sea like the Maid?”

“I'd have gone with the Warrior but yes. Just one day – poof! A fully formed, overly serious young woman from the waves.” He grinned at her but she was staring down at her hands, her brow furrowed. 

“What about you? Have you always been this arrogant and infuriating?” she asked.

“Your honesty is appreciated,” he said dryly. “Many people would say yes, I have been. I like to think at least at some point I was charmingly boyish.” 

“You're still childish.” 

“I said boyish.”

“Hm.” She handed him the next piece and they worked in silence for a few minutes, Jaime putting the car together as Brienne handed him each thing he needed just as he needed it. 

“What about your sister?” Brienne asked, the words tentative. “Has she always been...like she is?”

Jaime grunted. “Certainly since our mother died. Tyrion thinks she must have been like this before then and I was just too young to see it but I don't think so. Not that it matters, I suppose, since she is who she is now.” 

“How did your mother die?”

He set the car down for a moment and stretched out his fingers. “She died giving birth to Tyrion.” 

“Oh.” Brienne blinked, looking sad, and she touched his wrist gently. “I'm sorry.” Jaime felt a bright flash of anger spiral out inside him from the place where her fingers were cool on his skin; of course she would be sorry over the death of a woman she didn't even know the name of, when he hadn't considered for a second saying the same to her about her brother. Yet she had the gall to call _him_ infuriating. 

“It was a long time ago,” he snapped, harsher than he should have, and she pulled her hand away again, leaving only the ghost of her touch behind. 

Jaime picked up the car, getting them back to work. Brienne didn't try to comfort him again, even when he cut himself on the hobby knife ten minutes later. She just watched him suck on his finger, go look for the first aid kit and put on antibiotic ointment and a band-aid with one hand. 

“Should we stop?” she asked once he'd finished. The band-aid was crooked and he should have asked her to put a new one on but he couldn't. 

“We're not done building yet. Are you hungry? We can order room service.” She chewed her bottom lip, looking like she wanted to say yes but thought for some reason she shouldn't. “Have you ever had room service in a top floor luxury hotel room? We get special menus.”

“Really?”

He nodded and pointed to a thick book by the TV. “Go pick what you like, the company will pay for it.” 

Brienne flipped through the book for a minute, punctuated occasionally by little delighted gasps that were doing nothing for Jaime's attempt to think of her only as his race engineer. He briefly considered 'accidentally' injuring himself again on the hobby knife as a distraction when she turned, grinning. When she smiled like that, genuinely pleased with herself and what was happening, her face transformed from its awkward collection of mis-matched pieces to make her look young and happy and someone he was very glad to know. 

Someone he was very interested in knowing better. 

“We should order,” he said hurriedly, and they did: Brienne ending up with a salad, an appetizer, a gourmet burger, and a dessert there was no possible way she could finish, Jaime sticking to his trainer's prescribed demands of grilled chicken and the local seasonal vegetables. When he'd finished ordering, he turned to find her sitting on the couch, delicately examining the half-done car. 

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly and she glanced up at him, her brow furrowed. 

“Why?”

Jaime swallowed, trying to buy himself a moment to figure out why he'd ask that question out of nowhere. “Just curious,” he settled on. 

She frowned. “I'm twenty-seven.”

He nodded. “Do you want to know how old I am?”

“You're thirty-five. Your birthday is in July.” 

Right. She'd been a fan before he'd hired her. She had claimed it was a selling point. “What else do you know about me?” he asked curiously, was amused when her cheeks immediately reddened. 

“Your favorite drink is Dornish wine, your favorite food is your family's cheesy potato recipe, your favorite color is gold,” she rolled her eyes a little at that and he tried not to be offended, even though he'd only said it because he'd never really had a favorite color and he thought his father would appreciate it. “You started professional karting when you were eight, though you'd been doing it for fun before that, and you were the youngest racer to ever enter F1.” 

“That's quite impressive.” 

“I know about more than just you,” she said tartly. “I'm a fan of the sport, Lannister, you're just one part of it.”

“What's Lancel's favorite color?” he asked and when she didn't answer he smirked. “It's red.”

“I know even more about Renly Baratheon,” she said and a flare gun of annoyance went off inside him. 

“Renly Baratheon is lucky his teammate is in love with him because he'd be second string with anyone else,” he snarled. 

“He's what?” 

Her eyes were very big and very surprised. “Welcome to the insider's network,” Jaime said. “This is where you learn all the things you wish you didn't know about the drivers.”

“I didn't know he-” she clamped her mouth shut and set the car down. 

“Does it offend you?”

“No, of course not. I just always thought, well.” She shrugged. “Are they...together?”

“Renly and Loras? Not officially. Baelish thinks it wouldn't be good for the sport.”

“Because they're both men?”

“That's part of it. Mostly because they're on the same team. Nepotism doesn't bother Baelish but intra-team romance is abhorrent to him.” 

Brienne's face was scrunched in confusion. “But why? That makes no sense.” 

“On the contrary. Family members have a long history of fighting each other on and off the track. Lancel and I are not the only driver pair in F1 history who've been related and still hate each other; we're not even the only ones this season. IAF loves the drama it creates and so do many of the fans, frankly. But two drivers in love? One who clearly cedes ground to the other? Offensive, apparently. Not fighting fair. Unties the terribly complicated knot at the center of every F1 team: two drivers who are teammates and competitors both at the same time. If the drivers are working together to a single goal, it would feel like the constructor had an unfair advantage.” He shrugged. “That's the thought anyway.” 

“Have there ever been any others?” she asked and he chuckled a little at her unwilling curiosity. 

“Not that I'm aware of. I thought perhaps Dayne once, but,” he shook his head a little. “He was just married to the sport.” 

“Like you?”

Jaime tilted his head and considered her. “Not intentionally.” 

“I mean you've never had a steady public girlfriend,” she stammered, getting redder with every word. “Or boyfriend.”

“Maybe I've had a secret girlfriend, or boyfriend.” He knew he shouldn't tease her but she was blushing so hotly he couldn't help himself. “Maybe both.” 

“You don't have to tell me,” she said staring very intently at his feet. “Can we finish the model?”

“But don't you want to know?”

“No.” 

“Suit yourself.” He came around the coffee table and sat next to her where she was stiff and still red on the couch. “Where were we?” Mutely she shoved a piece towards him and when he took it from her the tips of their fingers touched with a small shock. Jaime ignored it and the brief responding flash of heat from somewhere below his waist and focused on the car again. 

“What about you?” he asked after a minute, when everything had settled. “Any secret girlfriends or boyfriends?”

“No,” she said softly. He glanced her way and decided not to press it further at the sad look in her lovely eyes, and they worked in silence until room service knocked on the door. 

“I've almost got this,” he said, “can you get the food? Make sure you add a big tip when you sign for it.” 

She nodded and handled the delivery, the waiter just leaving behind the two-layered cart loaded mostly with her plates. They ate while they talked strategy for the demands of the unusual morning qualifying session tomorrow followed by the regularly scheduled afternoon race, and Brienne ate nearly every bite to Jaime's impressed amazement. She seemed to enjoy every bite, too, licking her lips so frequently he was sure she must have noticed him staring at them. 

Once she'd finished off the dessert she looked out the window, where the worst of the storm was already easing and more of Gulltown peeked through the low clouds. 

“I should get back to my room,” she said. 

“We haven't finished the model. You can't leave when it's almost done.” He tried not to look too desperate, but he didn't want to spend the rest of the afternoon and entire evening alone watching whatever movies he could find on the hotel cable. He wanted to spend more time talking with Brienne; he'd found out her age and almost nothing else except that she had a crush on Renly Baratheon for unknown reasons, she loved food, and she blushed with delightful frequency. 

“Alright, but just until we finish the model. Then I do need to look at those printouts, no matter what you think. Plus I haven't done my workout today.”

“You could do it here with me.” Her eyes leapt to his, startled. “The gym here is probably much nicer than the one at your hotel.”

“I don't have my workout clothes with me.”

“I have extra.”

She flushed. “They probably won't fit,” she said, quiet. “I'm bigger than you.” 

He thought for a moment to deny it but she was likely right and he didn't want to insult her with lies about something that didn't bother him anyway. “Next time, then.” 

Brienne nodded and handed him the penultimate piece of the car. “Let's finish.” 

They did, faster than he wanted, talking off and on about the previous race and the lessons they could take to the one tomorrow, and when the car was drying on the coffee table, Brienne stood and gathered up her jumpsuit and bag. 

“You're right, that was fun,” she said. “And the food was way better than they have at our hotel.” 

“Thanks for the help. I'm not sure I would've finished it without you.”

“You would have. It just would have taken you longer, and some of the pieces might be wrong.” 

He laughed. “You're okay to get back?”

“The hotel's just down the road, and I've missed the rain.” She only had eyes for the last of the storm outside. Jaime considered for a wild moment asking to go with her, seeing what it was like as the rain fell cold on their skin, the wind pushing as they walked. He imagined it was much like arguing with Brienne: challenging, and revitalizing. 

“See you on the track,” he said, not having a plausible reason to even ask. Brienne nodded and slipped quietly from his room.

* * *

Though she was the steady voice in his ear through qualifying and a thrilling result of second place the next day, Jaime did not see much of Brienne herself. A quick check-in in the morning, a last review of strategy before the race, and then an unsatisfying high-five when he'd celebrated his p-2 finish with the crew in the parc fermé. She disappeared after that, even though he looked for her from the podium. Surely her height would have made her stand out even in the small sea of Lannister Corp, Direwolf, and Sunspear uniforms, but he couldn't make her out anywhere.

Lancel had come in p-10 mostly due to a flubbed pit stop and his own bad decision-making trying to recover from it and Jaime suspected his cousin's helmet lying upside down on the ground where he'd hurled it was the reason they were doing debrief tomorrow instead of immediately post-race. Which normally would have suited Jaime fine, except he'd been hoping to see Brienne and make sure he hadn't done something during their afternoon together that had caused her to avoid him. She'd seemed all right when she left, and she'd sounded normal over the radio today, but her absence was noticeable.

Jaime rolled his eyes at himself in his bathroom mirror. “Nothing is wrong,” he told his reflection. “You don't need to see her twenty-four hours a day.” Though he'd gotten used to the six or seven they'd often spend near each other. 

Irritated at himself and her, Jaime changed into a simple black dress shirt and slacks and went down to the hotel bar to have a few drinks and catch a recap of the day's racing on the TV there. He was pleased to see none of the rest of the Lannister Corp stuffed shirts were here and Lancel was probably still sulking in his room. He was less pleased to see some of the other drivers had had the same idea as him: Connington and Hunt from Griffin, Euron Greyjoy from Kraken, and Ramsay Bolton fresh from his p-9 place for Golden Company. If Viserys had been there, too, it would have been his perfect top five of drivers he most wanted to avoid. 

There were talking loudly at a pair of high tables, the corpses of several rounds of drinks already littering the area. Jaime hesitated in the entrance, seriously reconsidering how much he needed a drink, when Ramsay looked up and waved him over. 

“Kingslayer!” he yelled across the moderately crowded space. “Come here!”

Jaime wondered how pathetic it would be to pretend he suddenly had an urgent call when Ramsay shouted for him again, garnering the attention of most of the room. It was the exact opposite of what Jaime wanted, so he hurried over hoping to keep the man quiet. 

“Not here to intrude,” Jaime said when he was at their tables. “Just came for a quick nightcap.”

“Not going to watch yourself, pretty boy?” Euron asked, gesturing at the nearest TV which was showing the race. 

“Already saw it from the cockpit.” 

“Lannister is too good to drink with the likes of us, we didn't even get any points today,” Connington said in a voice that was only half-joking.

“Speak for yourself, I got two,” Ramsay boasted.

“Oh fuck off,” Euron grumbled. “Fuck, I'm out of beer.” He tried to pour the empty pitcher into his glass and groaned. “Fuck! We're all out of beer. You're up, Hyle.” 

Hyle Hunt grimaced but scooted around Jaime to head to the bar to re-order. “You want anything?” he asked on his way. 

_May as well get a free drink out of having to spend any time with these assholes._ “The best whiskey they've got.” 

Hyle didn't hesitate at what that would add to the order, just nodded and sauntered off while Jaime idly watched the race recap and kept barely tuned in to the others' conversation. 

“Anyone could get points in that car, they're pouring money into it.” 

Ah, that familiar argument. They weren't entirely wrong, though Jaime knew none of them would make top five regularly, and never top three, even if they did have his car. 

They flashed a brief clip of Brienne on the screen, headset on, listening to something one of the engineers was telling her and then talking to Jaime over the mic. He wondered what moment that was, was tickled to actually see her in action, the way her brow was furrowed so seriously and her long fingers pressed against her headphones. Though he heard her every word, he hadn't gotten to actually see her doing the job and his focus on post-race video was always on the car and the track. He'd have to see if he could get them to add a bit more of Brienne in the review cuts at the office. 

“Gods there she is again,” Connington said in a tone that immediately brought Jaime's attention around. “Good thing you only have to listen to her and not look at her, Lannister.”

“She's a good engineer,” he said through clenched teeth. 

“If you say so. Didn't you hire her as a mechanic?”

“She proved herself worthy of the promotion.” 

Connington leaned forward, his long red hair falling loose over his shoulders. “How'd you get her to put out?” 

“_What_?”

“Your engineer. I heard she was in your room yesterday.”

Jaime's jaw twitched, his fingers curling slightly at his sides. “We were only going over strategy for the race. Seems like you could have done more of that yourself.” 

“That's a good cover story. She was on my team back in F2, you know? Ugly as shit but she's good with the cars and eager to please. She'll do anything you ask. Well, almost anything,” he laughed, more ugly than Brienne could ever hope to be, Euron and Ramsay laughing with him like well-trained curs. Jaime's hands were in tight fists now and he could feel his heart pounding in his head. “Though we tried,” Connington went on, oblivious to Jaime's daggered stare. “Girl like that, you'd think she'd be desperate for it. I mean the boys used to call her the Beast.” 

Jaime punched Connington, a brutal uppercut that sent the other man out of his stool and collapsing to the ground, glasses falling and shattering on the floor around him and the other bar patrons leaping from their seats in surprise. 

Chest heaving, Jaime took a step nearer Connington, who cowered on the floor, blood streaming from his mouth, and held up a hand to try to protect himself from Jaime's fury. 

“Her name is Brienne,” Jaime snarled, and Connington nodded quickly, wincing and whining with the movement. 

Hyle stood a short distance away gaping at them, a pitcher of beer in one hand, Jaime's whiskey in the other. Jaime grabbed the whiskey from the shocked man and downed it, then threw the glass on the ground at Connington's feet, causing him to flinch and huddle into a ball to protect himself from the fresh shards of glass. 

“Thanks for the drink,” Jaime said before striding out of the bar and back to his room. His hand was already throbbing and he knew he'd have police knocking on his door soon enough asking about the incident, which meant he'd have to get Kevan and ultimately his father involved to start the process of paying people off to keep it out of the news. It was going to be a long, aggravating night that would inevitably end with a lengthy dressing down from his father. 

But he thought of Brienne working for that repulsive fucker Connington – her mysterious departure from Griffin team after only a couple of months suddenly very clear – and the nuisance of dealing with what he'd done seemed entirely worth it.

* * *

Brienne woke up Monday morning to a text on her phone from Podrick that was a link to some gossip site and ten surprised face emojis. Curious, Brienne clicked on the link as she lay in the comfortable enough hotel bed, knowing she had some time until the team bus left for the trip back to King's Landing.

The headline in all caps read HEAR HIM ROAR: 'KINGSLAYER' JAIME LANNISTER ATTACKS 'RED' RONNET CONNINGTON IN HOTEL BAR! and Brienne sat up abruptly and scrolled down. There was a picture immediately under the headline, clearly taken from some third party's phone, that showed Connington sprawled on the floor with blood on his scared face, glass all around him, and his hand held up protectively. Jaime stood over him in all black, lights highlighting the golden shine of his hair, tall and angry like a vengeful god. His strong hands were fisted and held half-up and ready to punch Connington again. _What the hell happened?_ was Brienne's first thought. _This picture should be in a museum_, was her second as she saved the photo to her phone. 

She read the short paragraph underneath looking for details. 

_Only three races into this year's Formula 1 season and the competition is already heating up! An alert bystander sent us this photo, taken just after Lannister Corp Racing's Jaime Lannister had punched Griffin's Ronnet Connington in a hotel bar Sunday night. Also known as the infamous 'Kingslayer,' Lannister left immediately after the incident. No charges were filed and it is unknown why Lannister went after Connington. The two have little prior history together and neither Griffin nor Lannister Corp Racing commented when we reached out. Lannister's race engineer, Brienne Tarth, once worked briefly with Connington in Formula 2, and rumor has it she spent the rainy day off with Lannister. Could these things be related? One thing's for sure: Lannister's aggressiveness isn't just on the asphalt!_

Brienne stared at the photo for another five minutes, soaking in every detail until she could have sketched it from memory if she knew how to draw, and then texted Podrick.

'What happened??'

'No one knows,' came his quick reply. 'Kevan is pissed'

Brienne nodded. She expected he would be; Tywin even more. She arranged to meet Pod downstairs for a short breakfast before they had to board the team bus home, and quickly packed. Should she text Jaime, too? What could she even say – good morning, did you punch this random driver because of me? It was absurd to think he would have; she was fairly certain he hadn't even known she'd been on Connington's team, let alone the terrible prank they'd played. 

When she'd put in her application to be a part of Griffin's junior engineers program, she'd been twenty-two and still full of hope. They'd called to tell her she was hired and she had jumped excitedly around the house, leaping into her father's arms and laughing in disbelief. She remembered clearly what it had felt like to arrive for her first day on the job, walking through the double doors with a griffin embossed in the glass of each, and introducing herself to the other new hires. 

The first day with Griffin had been the best of her time there, though she hadn't known it in the moment.

Back then, every day seemed better than the last. There had been the usual looks and comments the first week, as she expected, but by the second week she'd seemed to have won them over with her skills, and the men who had mocked her the week before were seemingly warming up to her with time. She suspected now that that was the week Hyle and his buddies had come up with the idea of the bet. 

Each week a new man would join the small circle that paid attention to her suggestions, that shared snacks with her and talked about their own experience, even some of those who'd been around much longer, like Dunsen and Ambrose. The work kept them all busy and Brienne was too naïve to realize what was happening and when after a month and a half the first man asked her out, she was so surprised she automatically said no. 

He'd looked disappointed, which she had not expected. Disappointed to _not_ go out with her? In high school and college, boys had been disappointed just to be paired up with her on projects. Her only sexual experience with a partner had come as a result of a mutually drunken hookup that had been a lot of fumbling, little pleasure, and never talked about or attempted again. The following week a different Griffin crewman asked her out. She said no again and kept her head down, but no one seemed offended, they just kept talking to her, trying to draw her out, giving her small gifts and courtesies. 

When Hyle Hunt asked her out after two months of listening attentively to her input and giving her extra time explaining how things worked, she had blinked owlishly at his plain, hopeful face and said yes. He'd looked so pleased when she did, and they'd scheduled for a week later after a series of practice runs and mechanical changes that would eat up all their time. Brienne had nearly floated around the garage that week, the smiles of her fellow mechanics following her around. 

Then, the day before her date with Hyle, Connington had come into the garage with a single red rose and while everyone else stared and whispered, he'd gone to one knee and held it out to her. 

“Brienne,” he said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space, “I know you've said yes to Hyle, but I want you to go out with me instead.” 

After that had come the first, cruel titters of laughter. An alarm rang deep inside her, some innate understanding that this wasn't right, that none of this had been right. But she'd wanted to listen to her heart more than she wanted to listen to the bells ringing loudly in her head and so she'd quietly said, “I could go out with you both” and the dam that had been holding back their mockery and their disgust finally broke and Connington had stood, laughing viciously. He threw the rose at her feet and shook his head. 

“I can't do it,” he'd howled, his face as red with laughter as his long hair. “I can't do it. You win, Hyle. I forfeit. I don't know how you managed; I can barely even look at her.” 

Brienne had fled from Griffin and never returned. 

One of the receptionists, a kind-faced woman who had treated Brienne well enough from day one, returned Brienne's things and shared what she had learned: that some of the crew had come up with a bet to try to get her to go out with them and the man that succeeded would win the pot and bragging rights around the garage. She'd also said that the team principal, Randall Tarly, had simply shaken his head when he found out and told them not to do it again. That night he sent Brienne an email firing her from the program for “not being able to perform the requirements of the role.” Brienne had deleted it without a word. Though her father had been stunned to hear she was leaving, he must have seen the agony on her face when she stepped off of the ferry because he'd simply hugged her tight and welcomed her home, only saying he had missed her, only asking what she wanted for dinner. 

If Brienne had been older, if she'd listened to the little voice after the first man had asked her out, she would have known, would have cut them off before it had spiraled out of control. At least they weren't talking about it now to Melisandre and it could remain in her past where she had gratefully left it five years ago. 

But seeing Jaime towering over Connington terrified on the floor, something inside of her trembled with relief.

* * *

Brienne didn't see Jaime until that afternoon when everyone had returned to the offices for the Monday debrief. She caught him in the hallway, the knuckles of his right hand wrapped in clean white gauze. They stopped in front of each other while others walked hurriedly by, coworkers on their way to their own activities.

“Hello, Lannister,” she said. 

“Hello, Wrench. Was the bus ride home okay?”

“Smooth enough.” She glanced down at the bandage and then back up at his face. “Is your hand okay?”

“It hurts,” he said, flexing the fingers a little, “but I'll be fine to drive.” 

“Is Tywin mad?”

Jaime grinned, quick and bitter. “Isn't he always?”

She wished she could ask him directly what had happened, if he had done it for her, but she was too afraid of the answer even as she needed to know. Jaime flexed his hand again and she reached for it, gently pulling it closer so she could look at the bandage to make sure it had been applied well enough. He let her do it, watched her with dark and interested eyes as she tenderly touched the ridges of his knuckles hidden like hills under snow. 

“Is there anything I should know about last night?” she asked, trying to be casual, trying to make it seem like a question any race engineer would ask their driver. His fingers moved against hers, warm and strong. 

“Connington's an asshole,” he said in a deep voice. “He deserved it.” 

Brienne glanced at him again and was struck silent by the intensity in his face, his green eyes as bright with fury as they'd been in the photo. He curled his fingers into hers. 

“I'm sure he did,” she said hoarsely. “I'm glad you're not too injured. You shouldn't punch people.” 

“Some people need punching.” He smiled at her and there were bells again; not the loud and dreadful ones from years ago but something that chimed light and hopeful and fluttering like her belly. _I am still a naïve fool_ she despaired, and she let his hand go. It hovered for a moment between them before drifting back down to his side. 

“If that's all, then we should get back to work,” she said striving for business-like and falling far short. 

“We should.” 

For a moment neither of them moved, and then they both moved at once, awkwardly trying to pass each other on the same side so Brienne's hands came up against Jaime's chest to keep from walking right into him, his hands coming around her elbows to steady them both. 

“Sorry,” she said. She took a step back and his hands tightened for a moment against her arms before letting her go. Her palms could still feel the cool fabric of his shirt. “You first,” she said, gesturing for him to go. 

He smiled tightly and moved past her and she watched him walk a few steps before turning around. 

“You know you're better than them, right? In every possible way.” He gave her a small, encouraging smile before hurrying off. Brienne stood in the hallway long after he'd disappeared, her head filled with the echoes of bells.


	8. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jaime,” that was a different voice, “what happened with Red Connington?” 
> 
> “Next question,” Jaime had said. 
> 
> There were others directed to Robb and Lancel and then someone else shouted, “come on, Jaime, why did you punch a fellow driver?”
> 
> “No comment.”
> 
> “Did he say something about you?” Lucas Corbray, a sportswriter from the local paper, asked. 
> 
> “No comment.”
> 
> “Was it something to do with Brienne Tarth?” Melisandre asked in a tone that sounded like she already knew the answer. 
> 
> “No fucking comment,” Jaime had spit out, and the tide turned back to the race.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a VERY productive break and managed to get two chapters done, so you get two chapters this week. The upcoming stuff I have to write is going to take longer than usual, though, and with the holidays on top of that I'm not sure I will be able to keep up my current productivity. I will do what I can to keep to the once a week posting schedule, but I may have to slip to a two weeks between posting schedule for December. I'll have a better idea in the next week! I'm still 5 chapters ahead, which is easing my anxiety. Heh. 
> 
> Today was the last F1 race of the 2019 season, sadly, but if you're interested in learning more, Netflix's Drive to Survive season 1 is really interesting and presented in a way people new to the sport can comprehend. (Plus you'll discover I have lifted some events from that as inspiration for this fic. *g*) I also watched The Art of Racing in the Rain' yesterday and it's about racing and how great dogs are and it definitely made me cry on an airplane.

Jaime thought he had suffered the worst of his father's fury when he'd been called into Tywin's expensively decorated office and yelled at for fifteen minutes about how disappointing he was as a son, a driver, and a man. The race the following week in Braavos proved that a Lannister always pays his debts, even if the time and form of payment was not their choice. 

He and Lancel had been fighting for p-1 the entire race and then fifteen laps from the end Brienne had come over the radio and in a dull voice said, “they want you to box.” 

“_Now_? I'm in first. The race is nearly over.”

“They want you to get a new set of softs and go for the fastest lap time instead.” 

“No,” Jaime said as his hands clenched so tight around the steering wheel his fingers ached. “Fuck that. I want first.” 

Tywin's voice cut between them, an unwelcome invasion. “We've given you your orders, Jaime. We need a 1-2 finish and you have the older tires. Box this lap.” 

Tywin Lannister didn't have to ever say the word “or,” it was always there in his demands: do what I've said, or I'll make your life miserable. No one asked Tywin “or what?”. 

Jaime slammed his hand on the wheel but boxed as directed, was in and out of the pit stop at exactly three seconds and though he did get the point for fastest lap time that day, he came in p-2 after Lancel. When he'd climbed out of his car, his pit crew were not celebrating the way Lancel's did; Brienne looked stricken, apologized before he could even take his helmet off. 

“It's not your fault,” he told her, but the disappointment lingered in her eyes. He continued to tell her over the following week, but she stayed even later at the office, hunched over her laptop when it was already dark outside and he was heading home; and she got him up early to do runs on the virtual trainer, taking notes and looking pale and intent. None of it would have made a difference against the obstinance of his father, but it drove her nonetheless. 

Which was why when Jaime edged past Robb Stark for p-1 at the Eyrie two weeks after Braavos, he knew he would refuse to give it up no matter what his father did. When he crossed first under the checkered flag, Brienne was leaning over the pit wall with the others, cheering and looking relieved as he zoomed under them. 

In the parc fermé he leapt out of the car and ran to his crew, high-fiving most of them until Podrick leaned over the low barrier and hugged Jaime so hard he gasped. “Help me” he mouthed at Brienne next to Pod, but she just shrugged and kept smiling, her big teeth stretching her face adorably wide. Bronn and the others swarmed him while Pod held on, patting him on the back, shouting at him through his helmet, and for a moment it was like fifteen years ago when a win was all sweetness and no sour, until he caught Martyn behind the others, glaring like they'd lost. 

Finally extricating himself from Pod, Jaime turned to Brienne and she patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. 

“Come up on the podium with me,” he said on the spur of the moment. 

“I can't.”

“You can. Kevan will be there.”

“He has to, he's team principal.” 

“Then come with him. It's our first win, you've earned it.” 

But she was shaking her head before he even finished the sentence. “I can't,” she said, firm. 

“At least promise me you won't disappear to the paddock.” She looked surprised and he shrugged. “I look for you,” he explained. 

“All right,” she said, so soft he couldn't hear it, could only read it on her lips. 

In the post-race podium finishers' room Jaime discovered Lancel had dropped to third and Robb had gotten p-2. They all took off their helmets and protective gear, each chugged a bottle of water and ate some of the snacks provided, their bodies vibrating with exhaustion and adrenaline mixing in a heady cocktail. Kevan was there for both Jaime and Lancel, but he mostly just hovered near Lancel, who was darting angry looks Jaime's way. Cameras captured all of it, their constant presence as standard a part of F1 as the cars. 

“Partnership going well, I see,” Robb said as he wiped the back of his neck with a wet towel. He inclined his head towards Lancel and Kevan. 

“We took p-1 and p-3 so good enough.” 

“I almost had you on turn 12.”

“But you didn't, did you?” Jaime took a final swallow of his water and set the empty bottle aside. “Maybe try harder next time,” he said, patting Robb on the shoulder as the announcer called them to the stage. 

He climbed onto the podium and saw a split sea of red and black jumpsuits below, Lannister Corp and Direwolf near each other but not mingling. Behind them were the fans, cheering and waving their hats and flags and t-shirts in excitement. But like she'd called his name, Jaime's eyes went straight to Brienne in the middle of the Lannister Corp team, clapping and beaming up at him, keeping her promise as he'd known she would. She was as reliable as the sun and her face shone as brightly. 

They handed Jaime his trophy – the Eyrie's was shaped like a crescent moon – and a giant bottle of champagne. He set his trophy down and shook up the bottle with two hands while they awarded a trophy to Kevan as principal of the winning constructor, another to Robb for second, and finally one to Lancel for third. Grinning, Jaime popped the cork when they'd finished and sprayed his bottle down on his crew, soaking them with alcohol that would dry sticky and sweet. The crew hollered and cheered, and when he was done, they were all wet, even Brienne, her straw hair plastered messily to her face, her freckled cheeks reddened and gleaming, and unbidden he had the sudden image of tasting the drops that gathered and dripped along the line of her jaw. 

_Fuck_, he thought, hurriedly setting his bottle aside to pick up his trophy and hold it strategically in front of him. It was one thing to admire her – _my race engineer_ he frantically reminded himself – it was another altogether to fantasize, even briefly. She deserved better than that. She deserved better than him leering at her while she worked so diligently on his behalf. The occasional friendly smile just meant they didn't actually hate each other, nothing more. 

He needed a release that would not make the rest of the season incredibly awkward. They were heading back to King's Landing tomorrow; he'd text Melara as soon as he got in. 

First, he had to make it through the Amber Lounge party being held that night in High Hall next to the track. High Hall was a huge room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls on every side that stood at the top of a tower of condominiums. The view was breath-taking – the lights of the Vale twinkling all around them, the track laid out like a child's perfect toy below. Spectators could watch the race from up here for an exorbitant amount, and Jaime suspected it was probably the second best seat in the house after the one behind the wheel.

When he entered it was to cheers loud even over the pounding music, and a swarm of celebrities and fans who had paid top price to mingle with the drivers and their crews. Jaime signed their shirts and programs and three women's chests and reminded himself how much they were paying him to be there, wondered if Brienne had been asked to show as well. 

He'd been whisked away to interviews and photos after the podium, which had at least quickly killed his erection. The lights in the media room were bright and hot, and the air was thick with sweat from the reporters and bloggers packed into the seating area. 

“Mr. Lannister,” someone had called out once he and Robb and Lancel had been seated. 

“Which one?” Jaime said to laughter. 

“Jaime,” that was a different voice, “what happened with Red Connington?” 

“Next question,” Jaime had said. 

There were others directed to Robb and Lancel and then someone else shouted, “come on, Jaime, why did you punch a fellow driver?”

“No comment.”

“Did he say something about you?” Lucas Corbray, a sportswriter from the local paper, asked. 

“No comment.”

“Was it something to do with Brienne Tarth?” Melisandre asked in a tone that sounded like she already knew the answer. 

“No fucking comment,” Jaime had spit out, and the tide turned back to the race. 

By the time he'd escaped that nightmare there'd been Lannister Corp photos and signing of a used tire for an auction and his Nomex shirt for the company's archives, and Kevan had sternly informed him he was going to the party and Brienne had already disappeared. 

He thought of her wet-faced and smiling and decided it was probably for the best. 

Now that he was here at the party, though, he wished she would show up. _At least I'd have someone I like talking to_, he thought, surveying the room. The prospects of an enjoyable evening were slim at best; Lancel was here tonight, too, with Theodan and Kevan, as were Robb and his teammate Jon Snow, and even Nightfort's drivers, Janos Slynt and Alliser Thorn, had come, though the crowd of groupies around them was noticeably less thick. 

Fortunately for all of them none of the drivers from the bar the other week were here, but Viserys was and his glare was like a laser beam even from across the room where he was talking with his teammate Daario and two women with very tight shirts and short skirts. When Jaime had first gotten into F1 he'd gone home with a few women dressed the same after events like this, hating it but wanting to fit in with the older drivers. After his dismissal back to F3 they'd disappeared with everyone else and that, at least, had been a relief. Since his return they had started to filter back, but he'd mostly avoided events like these since then, and the ones he did attend he always left drunk and angry and alone. 

_No reason to think tonight will be any different_, he thought as he extricated himself from the fans, begging off due to thirst and heading for the bar. He craved something hard and burning but he ordered lime and club soda, knowing his trainer would get a full report of what he consumed. As he stared grimly at the drink being poured, he felt someone come up next to him and was startled to see Addam. 

“Jaime,” the other man said with a cautious smile. 

“Addam,” Jaime said just as cautiously. “Lime soda?”

Addam's smile settled as though it meant to stay and he nodded. “Congratulations on your win.”

“Thanks.”

They stood side-by-side staring forward in uncomfortable silence until Addam had his drink in hand. “You seem more relaxed tonight,” he said. 

“Winning helps.” 

“I've forgotten what that's like.” Addam gave a rueful chuckle. He gestured to a small standing table nearby and for a moment Jaime hesitated before finally following. It had been so long since they'd talked to each other without a sea of reporters nearby. Jaime realized he had missed it. Everything he'd lost because of Aerys had accumulated into a giant pit in the center of his chest; he'd never taken stock of what the parts were that had made up the painful whole. 

“You're driving well so far this season,” Addam said into the silence. “Focused.” 

“Things have been working in my favor.” 

“New crew can do that for you. Seems you reached a long way out for yours.” 

“The distance was worth it.” Jaime took a drink and decided to take the goodwill Addam had extended. “How's it going with Sunspear?”

“Good enough. Oberyn's the lead there, of course, but I'm given my due.” 

“You took p-7 today, that's not bad.”

“I can do better,” Addam said, fierce for a moment in a way Jaime remembered from dozens of post-race talks. Addam had always been harder on himself than anyone; had always felt there was no reason he couldn't beat Jaime if he just applied himself more. 

“You can,” Jaime agreed. “But not better than me.” It slipped out, a dormant habit he hadn't thought of in fifteen years. A familiar riposte from before when they'd been more likely to be in each other's faces than this distant and polite awkwardness. 

Addam grinned. “You're driving better but you're still an arrogant prick.” 

“I'm sure my crew would agree with you.” 

“You still have Bronn?”

“Of course. Who else would take him?” Addam laughed a little, a sound as familiar to Jaime as his own. He felt the weight of every wasted year between them. 

They'd come up through junior karting together, each other's fiercest competition and closest friend. It had been Addam who had encouraged Jaime to make the early transition to F3, the almost immediate leap to F2, who had come over to Jaime's house when they were seventeen and brought ridiculously expensive alcohol he'd stolen from his family's cabinets in order to celebrate being picked for Dragonfire's coveted F1 seat the following season. Addam had filled the hole that Cersei's turning away had left in his life, until Aerys. 

After the crash, Addam had visited Jaime once to see how he was doing, but the doubt on Addam's face when Jaime had sworn it was an accident had felt like a knife to the heart, slicing away the last beating parts to be burned as thoroughly as if Aerys had had his way. Though Addam had reached out a few times after that, Jaime had been a whirlwind of fury and focus, all his will trained on getting back to F1, everything – and everyone – else be damned. They hadn't seen each other again until ten years later when Jaime finally returned to F1 to find Addam was his teammate at Lannister Corp. 

Addam had been civil, but Jaime could barely look at himself in the mirror those early years, let alone the best friend he'd pushed away so resolutely. After a single year as teammates, where Jaime thrashed about while he struggled to find his bearings, Addam had eagerly left for Sunspear to partner with Oberyn Martell. A second betrayal as far as Jaime had been concerned when it happened, but seeing Addam now, the black wound in his soul having started to clear, he couldn't blame the man for having looked for calmer roads. 

“Your new race engineer seems to have helped.”

“Brienne,” Jaime said. Brienne who had believed him in that too-close sauna, when she had no reason to listen. 

“She's an unusual choice.”

“I'm not sleeping with her,” Jaime growled and Addam's brows lifted. 

“I didn't say you were. I just meant she was so far outside of racing circles I'm surprised Tywin agreed to it.” 

“He didn't have much choice. Not many crew left in racing who will work with the Kingslayer.” 

Addam frowned. “They'd work with Jaime Lannister.” 

“Jaime Lannister was 19 years old the last time they saw him in Formula 1. It's just the Kingslayer now.” He downed the rest of his drink, hating that it wasn't actual alcohol. 

“I see you're still using that as a shield.” Addam set his drink on the table with a solid thump and Jaime could feel him pulling away again, the brief peace breaking under their feet. 

There was a flurry of activity near the entrance and when Jaime glanced over he saw Brienne's tall form being surrounded by cameras and eager fans. Her face was a mask but he knew her furrowed brow and tight, pursed lips well enough to see how anxious she was. He tensed, wanting to swoop in and protect her even though she seemed to hate it when he tried. 

“That's her isn't it?” Addam casually asked. “I'd like to meet her.” 

Jaime cast him a grateful look. “I'll go get her,” he said. He pushed through the crowd of fans – much bigger than Viserys had received, Jaime noted with wicked pride – and he could tell the moment she saw him because her whole body relaxed, her eyes lighting at his approach. Jaime couldn't recall anyone ever being so happy to see him, even if it was just for an act of chivalry. He took a quick breath before he grabbed her wrist. 

“Sorry everyone,” he told the group, “my race engineer needs a drink and I promised to introduce her to someone. Maybe later.” He gently tugged her after him, creating a path through the disappointed crowd. 

“Ugly fucking bitch,” someone muttered and Jaime turned sharply, glaring at the faces, trying to find the one who had said something, but none of them gave up their secrets. There were a few men grouped together that looked like they could be the perpetrators, but Brienne had twisted her wrist to grab him and was tugging on his hand now, pulling him away. “Leave it,” she whispered harshly, so he did. They held onto each other for several steps after they were free of the small crowd before she dropped his hand. His arm tingled. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I hadn't intended to come but Kevan said I needed to for the company.”

“Kevan's full of shit.” Brienne frowned to where Kevan was currently laughing about something with a woman Jaime didn't recognize and he added, “but I'm glad you're here.” 

She looked back, startled, a small, pleased smile on her thick lips. “You were right, I could use a drink.” 

“Can I introduce you to someone first?” 

Brienne smoothed down the blue flannel button-down she was wearing, clearly a men's style, tucked her thin hair behind her ear. They were hopeless gestures, small things that wouldn't change the size or look of her, but they were tics he'd grown fond of and he found himself smiling. The blue of the shirt brought out her eyes, anyway, and that was all anyone needed to notice about her. 

“I promise you look fine,” he said. She blushed but straightened. 

“Alright. You do remember my name, don't you?” 

Jaime laughed at the unexpected joke, the droll tone of her voice. His heart and step felt lighter as he led her to Addam, who watched them closely as they approached. Jaime waited for Connington's disgust or Martyn's disdain in Addam's eyes, but Addam just looked intrigued. 

“Addam, this is Brienne Tarth, my race engineer. Brienne, this is Addam Marbrand, my, uh.” He'd been about to say friend, but that label had fallen off from disuse years ago. “We used to be teammates.”

“I remember,” she said, holding out her hand. Addam shook it and smiled warmly at her, and Jaime saw the blush bloom like flowers in her cheeks; he'd always been more smooth than Jaime around women, his easy charisma winning them over. “Your first year back. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Marbrand.”

“Please, call me Addam. Putting up with Jaime means you've earned the honor more than most of these lackwits,” he said, grinning.

“It's been no trouble,” she mumbled, so clearly lying that Jaime couldn't stop from laughing. 

“You're a shitty liar, Wrench. Addam knows how terrible I am, you can be honest.” 

“Wrench?” Addam asked curiously. 

“A friendly nickname,” Jaime said. 

“You said it was because I ruined your day.” 

“It's friendly now.” 

“You still think I ruin your day.” 

“Only sometimes,” Jaime said, smiling at her, “but it's worth it.” 

He could feel Addam's curious stare and Jaime picked up the empty glasses to distract them all. “Refill?” 

“None for me,” Addam said. 

“I'll take one, thank you.”

Jaime nodded and hurried to the bar to get two more drinks. “Give mine a good shot of vodka will you?” he asked the bartender, who grinned and went to work. While the man readied the drinks, Jaime looked back at the table, saw Brienne making some shape with her hands, the long fingers forming and re-forming as she described whatever it was to Addam. He seemed to be paying close attention to what Brienne was saying, treating her as he would any male race engineer. It was a relief, Jaime realized, to know at least in his past he'd had a friend who was a decent person even if he couldn't claim Addam as friend still. 

A photographer approached the table and Jaime stood abruptly from where he'd been leaning on the bar. The man said something that had Brienne turning crimson and shaking her head furiously. Jaime grabbed the drinks and hurried over. 

“-my girlfriend,” Addam was saying. 

Jaime set the drinks down loudly, the liquid sloshing over the edge of each to splash onto the table. “What did I miss?” he asked. 

“Harlan here works for – what site is it again?”

“Formula 1 Fan Site,” he said. “I was just asking if she was Addam's girlfriend.” 

“What kind of a fan doesn't know the first woman race engineer?” Jaime sneered. 

Harlan's looked unimpressed. “My beat is fan photos not the crew. Besides she might be dating him, I don't know.” 

Brienne's whole face was red now and she looked apologetic. “I'm sorry, Addam, I hope-”

“Sorry?” Addam shook his head and briefly covered her hand. “No apologies necessary, Brienne. Mr. Hunter made an honest mistake.” 

Jaime felt his jaw clench. Addam always had been the calmer of the two of them, except that one time when they were twelve when he'd punched Jaime for forcing him off the track. He had won the sponsorship Jaime had been desperate for, and Jaime had let his emotions drive his race as he always did. “She's not dating anybody, she's here because of her work,” he snapped. “Did you need something else?”

“Well can I get a picture of her then for the site? Seems like she's important.” 

“Ask her, you idiot, not me.” 

Hunter looked like he wished he had gotten any other beat on the planet than this particular table. “Lady-”

“Ms Tarth,” Jaime interrupted. 

“Just Brienne is fine,” she said, sounding both annoyed and embarrassed. “I don't know, I don't want to be singled out.” 

“Then what about a picture with your driver? Which one is it?”

“It's me you incompetent fool,” Jaime said tightly. “She's my race engineer” 

Harlan glanced at Brienne and looked like he felt sorry for her for that being the answer. Brienne put on a resigned, tight-lipped smile. “Can you two stand next to each other? Over by the window so we can see the lit up skyline behind you?”

Jaime stalked over to the window with the others following, including Addam who seemed more amused than anything. Brienne stood next to Jaime, the two of them side-by-side, her hands clasped awkwardly in front of her, her chin pulled down. It would be a bad picture, and it didn't catch her eyes at all. Jaime considered what to do for a moment as Harlan readied his camera. 

“Can you two, like, look at each other or something?” Harlan asked. “Give it some interest?”

_I could kiss her_, Jaime thought foolishly for a moment, there on the cheek where the last pink was fading under the crowd of freckles. That would certainly get a reaction. Instead he turned towards her and said, “hey, Wrench” and when she glanced up Jaime went on his tiptoes, lifted his chin and grinned down at her. She rolled her eyes in automatic response, barely restraining a smile as though she didn't want to encourage him. Jaime heard the camera click a couple of times and lowered back to his regular height. 

“So vain,” she said on a long-suffering sigh. 

“Did you get it?” Jaime asked Harlan, who nodded. “Is that it then?”

“I guess.” 

Addam held up Harlan a moment to shake his hand and thank him for his time before joining Jaime and Brienne at the window. “You haven't changed in twenty-five years,” Addam said, shaking his head. 

“A good driver is consistent, isn't that what you always say?”

“I do, but you never listen.” 

The easy rejoinder died on Jaime's tongue as Viserys and Daario stepped into their small circle. Addam stiffened in a mirror of Jaime, and Brienne glanced between all of them, uncertain. 

“Kingslayer,” Viserys said, his voice dripping with honeyed scorn.

“I admire you for showing up at an event when you didn't even place top fifteen, Viserys. Takes courage,” Jaime said, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

Addam shot him a frustrated look and Jaime rolled one shoulder in a shrug. Addam had been mad at him for a decade; what was one more reason for disappointment? 

“If you can keep coming back to F1 after losing year after year, I can manage one event,” Viserys said. 

“Jaime,” Brienne said suddenly. “Kevan reminded me before I came here that we needed to talk to him about tomorrow morning and I have to leave soon. Can you come with me?”

Viserys looked like he wanted to make some snide comment so Jaime cut him off by saying, “a winner's work is never done” and following in her wake. 

“You made that up about Kevan, right?” he asked quietly.

“Of course I did. We can't have you punching a second driver in as many weeks.”

“I wouldn't hit Viserys.”

Brienne stilled for a moment. “I don't believe that.”

“I wouldn't,” Jaime protested. “I might _want_ to do it, but I wouldn't. He's a complete ass but I did kill his father. I've hurt him enough.” Unexpectedly Brienne's eyes went soft, lit from within like a warm lamp. 

“You're a very surprising man sometimes, Lannister.” 

“Keeps people from having too high expectations of me,” he said, and though he tried to throw the words away they ricocheted and fell hard with the truth. 

Brienne opened her mouth, ready, he was certain, with some piece of wisdom that would cut straight to his core and leave him laid more bare before her as she slowly filleted him apart one revelation at a time. He couldn't bear losing another protective layer tonight surrounded by so many other people who still hated him. “I don't care if Viserys is watching” he said before she could speak. “We don't have to do this.” 

“I was just trying to help.” 

A desperate darkness surged up inside him. She was always helping him, with his father, with other drivers, with the work that had been his heartbeat for as long as he could remember. He hated how much he'd grown to need it, need her, in his life when he could do so little for her in return. He couldn't even give her her job; that was ultimately his father's doing. Jaime bit so hard on his lip it ached, barely containing the unnecessarily cruel words that beat against his teeth. The least he could do was not insult her for being her, for being _kind_. 

“I guess we don't have to,” she said to his silence. The worst part was the disappointment that dimmed the light in her eyes. She was disappointed in him, he knew; another mark against him, to join the crowded tally she must surely be keeping. 

They stared at each other in the middle of the party, so close he could have reached out and pushed her away, or grabbed her and pulled her against him. He wondered if she would still taste like the champagne or if it had all washed clean. 

“I-I should go,” she said. 

“I suppose you should. See you at the office.” 

Brienne nodded mutely and as she turned the lights lingered long enough on her face he could see her chin wobble briefly before she strode off, her head held high. 

Addam came up on his left, folded his arms across his chest and watched Brienne go. “Still a lady-killer, I see.”

“I'm not trying to pick her up, she's my race engineer.” 

“So why don't you treat her like that?”

Jaime frowned at the other man. “I'm not any different with her than with Bronn.”

“Then your relationship with Bronn has changed considerably in the last five years.” 

“Fuck off,” Jaime groused. Addam smirked and the ground that had broken apart between them before seemed to solidify again. 

Addam glanced at his watch. “I've got to get back to the hotel, I'm flying early tomorrow. It was good to see you, Jaime,” he said sincerely. 

“You too.” It had been; they had almost seemed like friends again. 

“It doesn't always have to be like this,” Addam said, his voice soft but intense. “You're more than just one terrible act. I think your race engineer sees that.” He squeezed Jaime's shoulder. “You should try to see it, too.” 

In his hotel room later that night, Jaime brushed his teeth and stared at himself in the mirror, and tried to see the man he used to be.

* * *

The party had been a mistake, Brienne thought Monday afternoon. They were back in the office, practicing pit stops to try to finally crack the three-second threshold that lingered just out of reach, but she kept finding herself back at the party.

“Ready,” she said, dragging herself to attention. She held the stopwatch up and on their nods shouted “go.” The crew leapt into action and once they stepped away she clicked it off and grimaced. 3.25 seconds. They were getting slower. 

“Take five,” she said, “then we'll do it again.” 

Before most of them had even left the room her thoughts had already drifted back to the night before, pulling it apart for the tenth time. Kevan had requested her attendance in a way she could not say no to, but it had been a mistake to go nonetheless. In general he was always hinting at more from her: to do more media, to make a bigger deal of being the first woman, to give more credit to Lannister Corp Racing for hiring her, but every time she thought about taking Melisandre up on her interview request or mingling with the fans in unprotected spaces, all she could hear were the barely hushed up comments about her looks; all she could see was the smug contempt on their faces that a woman would dare to excel in a man's sport. She'd foolishly hoped Jaime would be there even though he almost never went to these, and seeing him pushing through the crowd to get to her had flooded her body with unexpected relief. 

_Jaime's coming for me_, she had thought, her wrist burning when his fingers slid around it. 

_Be careful what you wish for_, she'd been thinking as she left Jaime boiling over with a desperation she couldn't understand. He'd been so mad when she'd only wanted to help, as friends should help each other. Perhaps her mistake was thinking they were friends. They'd been working well together for weeks now, an easy give-and-take that extended to success on the track. Jaime listened to her in a way no one but her father ever had. Even Bronn still had to be reminded of her role sometimes, but Jaime always treated her as an equal. She knew his most closely guarded secret, and though she hadn't told him hers she suspected he knew something of what had happened with Griffin. He'd invited her to spend an entire red-flagged Saturday in Gulltown together to build a model, for the gods' sake. What in the world was this _but_ friendship? 

Maybe he had caught her staring avidly at him when he was sweaty and smiling after free practice. Maybe she had not hidden as well as she'd thought the way it had felt when she'd held his injured hand in hers. Maybe he'd seen her enraptured by the saved photo of him standing over Connington, those long minutes where she imagined he had done it for her, like she was some petite maiden that men would fight for and not...who she actually was. 

“Can we start?” Bronn asked, and Brienne startled. She brushed her sweaty hair from her forehead and nodded. They'd all filtered back to the space while Brienne had been lost in thought yet again. 

_Focus_, she commanded herself. 

She decided to focus on Martyn, inevitably the last tire man to step away and the most likely culprit behind their slowdown. He'd gotten more sour the further they got into the season, and it had begun to extend to more than just her. Martyn was snappish with everyone including his brother, and Willem had given up trying to change his moods. Whatever was going on with Martyn, it was affecting his work and the crew's cohesion. 

“One more time,” she told them and they groaned but got in position. “Go!”

3.30 this time and she shook the innocent stopwatch in annoyance. “Martyn,” she snapped. The man didn't even look her way.

Brienne stalked to him and said, louder, “Martyn. Is your tool working?”

“You want me to show you?” he asked, his tone full of ugly insinuation. 

She cursed her reddening cheeks. “You know what I mean. We were even slower that time and you're always the last person up.” 

“You want to try it?” he asked and it still felt like innuendo but at least he wasn't leering at her. 

“Fine, let me see if it's calibrated correctly.” 

Martyn held the pneumatic gun sideways towards her. Brienne grabbed it with one hand and before she could get the other to stabilize it, Martyn pulled the trigger. 

The pneumatic went off like a bomb in her hand and it fell with a crash as she wailed in pain and collapsed to her knees on the floor next to it. In between one painful heartbeat and the next, Podrick came flying out of nowhere and tackled Martyn to the hard concrete and then the fire burning up her wrist consumed her. 

Shouting burrowed through the white-hot agony and Brienne blinked and gasped from where she was hunched protectively around her wrist to see Bronn holding Willem back while Pod and Martyn rolled around trying to land punches on each other. 

“What-” she said, trying to speak though her lungs could barely get a breath. When she tried to move to stop the chaos that was quickly enveloping the crew, she could manage only to one knee before the agony was too much. 

Squinting through her blurry vision, Brienne saw Cleos Frey and Lucion pulling Podrick and Martyn apart, trying to avoid their fists waving violently, desperate to strike. 

“Let me go!” Pod shouted, his stutter disappearing with the adrenaline, pulling one arm free before Bronn abandoned Willem to help contain Podrick. 

Then Jaime was there, looking confused and furious as he crouched down next to Brienne. 

“What happened?” he asked intensely. “Are you ok?”

“It's my wrist.” She wiped her face with her uninjured hand and choked back tears. “The pneumatic got me.” 

“I s-s-saw the whole thing,” Pod said still ferociously struggling between Bronn and Lucion. “M-M-M-Martyn did it on p-purpose. He p-p-pulled the trigger j-j-j-just as she r-reached for it.” 

Brienne glanced at Jaime and felt a chill go through her. His face was eerily calm, the mask of the Kingslayer. Over his shoulder, Lancel and his crew filtered in, murmuring curiously. 

Jaime turned his head to the side to address Martyn, but his eyes never left Brienne's. “You're fired, Martyn.”

“You can't fire me, I work for Tywin. I'm Kevan's son,” Martyn said through a mouth filled with blood. 

“Then quit.”

“Fuck you.” 

Jaime's eyes were bright and glittering as streetlights on a midnight road as he slowly stood, the shadow of what he'd done to Connington, to Aerys, hovering over him like dark wings. He faced Martyn and Brienne whispered, “Jaime, please. It's not worth it.” 

His back was as unyielding as the concrete she was sitting on, holding her throbbing wrist against her chest. Jaime took another step nearer Martyn. 

“If you don't quit, then you'll have to take an extended medical leave,” Jaime said softly. 

Martyn swayed a little and still looked for a moment like he would attack; by the way Jaime's body tensed she suspected there was a part of him that wanted Martyn to. But instead Martyn spit a glob of blood on the floor, glared at Brienne, and pushed his way out of the crowd of onlookers. The two men from Lancel's crew that had been with Martyn when he'd threatened Brienne the first time followed after him, muttering and shooting both Jaime and Brienne ugly looks. 

“Does anyone else need to quit now?” Jaime said, his voice rebounding against all the walls, filling the space with his barely controlled rage. He turned his head to glare at Willem, who only stared down at his own feet. “Good.” 

Jaime turned back to Brienne, knelt down next to her. “Let me see it,” he said, gently touching her wrist. Even that small pressure made her hiss with pain and he jerked his fingers away. “Pod, take Brienne to whoever's on-call for first aid and see if she needs to go to the hospital. Get yourself looked at, too.” She couldn't escape the gravitational pull of Jaime's eyes, the swirling ice and fire in them. “I should go with you,” he murmured. 

“I'll be fine.” 

Jaime's jaw twitched, something deep and hurt flaring, but he nodded and gently helped her stand with Bronn's assistance. Podrick took her arm even though he had one eye already starting to swell shut and a trickle of blood dripping from his nose down his lip. They limped off, Brienne moving slowly to keep from jostling her injured wrist, Pod because of the hits he'd taken. 

“I didn't know you even knew how to fight,” she said, trying to keep things light through the pain as they walked from one building to the other, ignoring the shocked looks from passers-by.

“I d-don't.” He smiled sideways and then winced when it pulled at a cut on his lip. 

“Did you really see him do it?” she asked. 

Podrick couldn't quite meet her eyes. “I-I-I know he did.”

“That's not a yes,” she said and Pod just ducked his head. “Thank you, though. For taking my side.” 

Pod's hand tightened on her elbow and they shuffled in companionable silence the rest of the way.

* * *

An hour later they left the infirmary bandaged and thoroughly checked out. Jaime was leaning against the wall sucking on a lollipop, apparently waiting for them. Brienne stared somewhere around his collar and lightly covered her thickly bandaged wrist with her other hand. He glanced briefly at her before focusing on Podrick.

“You look like you lost,” Jaime said, all casual lightness. 

“Y-y-you should see th-the other guy.” 

Jaime grinned as reckless as a little boy. “We don't ever have to see him again; he already put in his resignation. Kevan's accepted it, although he wants to talk to you both. I put him off until tomorrow, said you needed some rest and recovery time.” He turned his attention to Brienne, and he pushed off of the wall. “Did they take care of you? Is it broken?”

“Just sprained. It's a very state-of-the-art medical area for a business.”

“We get more injuries than you'd think here and if we can get fixed up onsite we'll work longer according to my father's thinking.” 

“That's dreadful,” Brienne grimaced. “I suppose that means we should get back.” They'd given her extra-strength ibuprofen but her hand still throbbed, hot and angry under the bandages. “I do need to put more ice on it tonight, though.”

“No more work for either of you, I sent the whole crew home.”

“But we leave for Pentos in a week.”

“A few more hours of work on a Monday after race day isn't going to make a difference. Come on.” He started walking towards the main doors expecting them to follow. Podrick just shrugged when Brienne looked his way and then went after Jaime. 

When they stepped into the sunlight out front, Sandor was already waiting there with his car. 

“Thank you for calling him,” Brienne said. 

“I didn't call him for you. Hound, you're taking Podrick home today.” 

“Heard what happened,” Sandor said, opening the back door for Pod to get in. “Tell me what you did on the drive, lad, and I'll tell you all the places you went wrong so you're ready for next time.” Podrick smiled bashfully as he got into the car. 

Once the door was shut, Sandor turned to Brienne. “Your hand okay?”

“It will be.”

“I expect you'll be wanting to come back to work tomorrow then.” 

“Of course,” she said, frowning. “It's just a hand.” 

Sandor grinned, a feral split of his twisted lips, and Brienne realized she'd never seen him look actually happy before. “You're tough. That's good. But don't expect any special treatment,” he said, his tone almost charming. 

“I would never,” she said lightly. 

“Can't be having you get a big head.” He nodded at her and got into the driver's seat and it was only as he started pulling away did she realize that her ride home was leaving. 

“Oh! Wait!” she called out after his quickly receding taillights. “I guess I'll take the bus,” she sighed. 

“Do you really think I'd send Podrick home with the Hound and leave you on your own?” Jaime asked, sounding genuinely hurt. 

Brienne blinked at him. “I didn't really think it through. Is he coming back, then?”

“No, Wrench, I'm driving you. My car's over here.” He left her open-mouthed as he headed for his sports car; she would have been less shocked if he'd just announced the sun was purple and his car was made of cheese. 

Jaime unlocked his car and opened the passenger side door. “Well?”

Her head ducked, Brienne hurried over. “You don't have to do this,” she said; his fingers tightened on the edge of the door. 

“Just get in the car.”

“I can take the bu-”

“Get in the blasted car, will you?” 

Brienne glared at him. “You're even less hospitable than Sandor.” 

“We're a perfect match then, Wrench, because so are you.” 

She pursed her lips but clambered awkwardly into the car. Jaime took the elbow of her injured arm to stabilize her, careful not to touch or jostle her wrist. His fingers were gentle even though his face was hard with frustration. He slammed the door once she was tucked in and Brienne struggled to get the seatbelt with one hand as he threw himself into the driver's side. 

“Got it?” he asked once she'd clicked in and she just nodded and stared out the window. He huffed, a sharp blast of annoyance, and started driving. 

“I can give you directions,” she said after a minute as the car purred into weekday traffic. 

“I already know where it is.” 

They were quiet for several more minutes until Brienne reached over and turned on the radio. Jaime frowned at her. 

“What are you doing?”

“Putting on some music,” she said, searching for a rock station. 

“Can't bear to talk to me?”

Brienne furrowed her brow. “You seem too annoyed to talk.”

“I'm annoyed because you never want my help!”

“You never ask to help you just assume I'll be okay with it!” 

They glared at each other for a brief moment before Jaime turned his attention back to the road. “I thought we were getting along,” he grumbled. 

“We were.” 

“Then why are we arguing now?”

“Because you're stubborn.” 

Jaime laughed loudly in the car, filling up what space was left in the small interior that wasn't overwhelmed by their two big bodies. “That's rich coming from you.”

Brienne turned up the music instead of answering and he just shook his head, his strong hands confident on the wheel. She did her best to not stare at them, but it was hard to ignore the tendons stark under his golden skin, the way he would rub his palms occasionally over the leather in a soothing motion. She imagined him doing that to his F1 wheel. To her. 

Flushing, Brienne looked out the window at the city speeding by. She knew better than to even skirt near a fantasy so absurd she'd have better luck sprouting wings and flying away. They weren't even friends, apparently, just coworkers who spent hours a day one-on-one, hung out when they had free time, and sometimes told each other dark secrets in saunas. 

Jaime parked in front of her apartment building and when he shut the radio off the silence was startling. 

“Thank you for the drive home,” Brienne said, still looking out the window. She fumbled getting her seatbelt off and the door open and Jaime exhaled loudly and got out. He helped her out with the same tender efficiency he'd helped her in and then closed her door, the car beeping when he locked it. 

He took a deep breath. “Can I help you get settled in your place?” he said with determination. 

“Inside my apartment?” she asked, knowing the blood was returning to her cheeks. 

“Unless you live in that alley over there, then yes.” 

“It's really-” she stopped herself at the way he flinched as though her denial was a physical blow. _Let him help you_ she told herself firmly. “That would be nice, thank you,” she amended. 

Jaime nodded once, but he looked relieved. 

As she slid her key into the lock she panicked for a second that her apartment would embarrass her, but as she tentatively opened the door it wasn't messy or compromising; the worst thing about it was how sterile it looked. She ushered Jaime in and she could see him noticing it, too. 

“Let me just set my things down,” she said quickly before he could make some smart-ass comment. He glanced briefly through her open bedroom door and then went into the kitchen. 

“I'll make you dinner,” he said like that was the most natural thing in the world for famous F1 star Jaime Lannister to say. 

“Do you know how?”

Jaime rolled his eyes and opened her fridge. “I can at least fry some eggs or something. Which is good because the state of your supplies is horrifying.” 

“I usually go shopping on Monday nights,” she said defensively. 

He slammed the fridge shut and opened the freezer. “Change of plans: I'm ordering too much takeout and then you can have leftovers that are easy to reheat. First,” he rummaged around, “an ice pack.” 

Brienne set down her coat and her bag, unzipped the top of her jumpsuit and slowly pulled her arm free, wincing every time she had to tug the fabric across it, and let the top half of her suit fall to her waist. The tank top she always wore underneath was sweaty and she wanted a shower but Jaime was standing there in her kitchen moving with easy confidence, going through her drawers to find a towel and a plastic baggie as though he had nothing better to do than be there helping her. He looked calm, his short hair a little messy, the only lines on his face the beginning of crow's feet around his eyes. The t-shirt he wore, deep red except for the white block lettering of his sponsor, curved warmly over his muscular chest and shoulders, the bulge of his upper arm. For such a domestic scene, her body responded like he was naked instead. 

“There we go,” he said and he held up his ice pack proudly, though when he looked her way the smile dipped from his face and Brienne folded her arms over her chest in embarrassment. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

“You're welcome,” he said, his voice low, registering somewhere deep in her belly. Brienne looked down at her feet, feeling even more awkward. She knew she shouldn't twist his politeness into something sensual, but it was hard not to when he looked like that, when he came around the kitchen to take her hand and gently press the ice pack to it, so near that his breath brushed warm against her bare shoulder. Brienne shivered a little, goose bumps running down her arm. 

“Too cold?” he asked. 

“No. I mean yes, I should change. I can order takeout, you don't have to.” 

The plastic baggie crinkled as his fingers gripped it harder for a moment and then he let her go and she regretted opening her big mouth. He looked hurt as he ran his hand over his hair and sighed. “I can take a hint. Think you'll ever like me?” he asked, his joking tone ragged around the edges. 

Brienne looked down at the ice pack he'd put together for her, thought of him offering to get her food, driving her home. She had wanted to help him when he had been hurt at the Amber Lounge party and it had felt much like he looked now; perhaps he really did consider her a friend, too. 

“I like you now,” she said, touching his shoulder gently. Jaime's head jerked up and he searched her eyes. 

“Okay then,” he said, and the smile that followed his words was heartbreakingly sweet. “You can't take that back when you're not distracted by your wrist tomorrow.”

“Don't give me a reason to,” she said, grinning a little. She yawned suddenly, started to stretch her arms and grunted with pain. “No stretching. Check,” she muttered. 

“I should let you rest,” Jaime said as he turned abruptly away. “You're sure you don't need me to order some food?”

“I can manage a call with one hand.”

He smirked and even without saying a word Brienne had a vivid image of the dirtiest interpretation of that statement, and felt her whole body go hot. 

“Then I'll leave you to it,” Jaime said. “Goodnight, Wrench.”

“Goodnight, Lannister. Thank you.” He nodded and shut the door behind him. Brienne called the nearest Pentoshi place and ordered enough food for three people, then carefully changed her clothes, catching the scent of Jaime's soap in the air. 

_We are at least friends_, she thought as she sat on the couch later watching the recap of Jaime's win the day before. She did not think of his strong hands so soft on her wrist. She did not imagine them hard on her elsewhere. _At least we have that._


	9. June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can I treat you to whatever's leftover in the cafeteria?”
> 
> Brienne made a face, sticking out her tongue in a way that was unbearably cute. “I'd rather just get food when I get home.” 
> 
> “It's Monday night, you don't have any food.”
> 
> She blinked at him, startled. “You remembered it's my shopping day.”
> 
> Jaime shrugged uncomfortably. “It's a weird day to go shopping, of course I'd remember.” 
> 
> “I think I'm going to go do that, actually, if we're done?” she asked as she stood to her full height, towering over him in his chair. He very firmly squashed the image that immediately rose up of them posed like this in his bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though I've gotten very little writing done this week, I'm going to be super busy this weekend so I'm posting this week's chapter now in the hopes that what time I can scrounge together in the next few days I'll be able to use to focus on finishing my chapter and knowing I've posted this week will encourage my brain to keep going. Fingers crossed.

'Haven't seen you in awhile; coming over soon?' 

Jaime frowned down at his phone, his finger hesitating over it as he considered his response. He hadn't seen Taena – or Melara – for months, he realized; since at least back in January before the start of the preseason. They had no expectations of each other, but over five months since their last interaction was an unusual stretch. The last time he'd been with either of them was the night Brienne had called him after her arrival in King's Landing. 

_Busy_, he told himself, sending a quick message saying everything was fine and he'd be in touch. 

_Brienne_, his traitorous thoughts chimed quietly. 

There was a knock on the door of his office and he knew it would be her without having to look; she had a heavier hand than the rest of his team and she did an economical double-tap the same way every time. 

“Come in.” 

Brienne smiled a little as she entered, her big blue eyes bright and happy to see him, as they had been nearly every day since he'd left her apartment after Martyn injured her wrist. During the race in Pentos they'd bantered at a lightning pace while he'd sailed to p-1, bringing him within eight points of Robb for the world championship. They still argued constantly but now it felt familiar and comfortable and not the antagonistic picking at each other from when she'd first joined the team. 

They were friends, he knew, and he hated it. 

Jaime had always failed at friendship and having hers felt like he was a toddler plucked down alone on a tightrope with the world's most expensive and fragile vase. A single misstep and it would all crash around them, and Jaime excelled at missteps. 

But the alternative was _not_ being her friend and even he wasn't that masochistic. 

So he smiled wide at her when she came in and felt a little thrill when her thick lips curved to mirror his. 

“I've got the Roost footage ready for study, do you have some time? Your calendar looked clear.” 

“Let me check,” he said, opening up his laptop. “How's the wrist?”

Brienne brushed the store-bought brace she'd picked up two weeks ago when the onsite nurse had told her the worst of the swelling was past. Kevan had simmered with quiet fury as she and Podrick had told their story with Jaime in the room to back them up, but Jaime honestly hadn't been able to tell whether he was mad at them or at Martyn. Either way, Martyn hadn't come back since that day and his father had found someone to replace him that was due to start tomorrow. Goat or Hoat or something, Twyin had said, poached from Ramsay Bolton's team at someone's recommendation. Jaime didn't really care as long as the man listened to Brienne and worked harder than Jaime's miserable cousin. Being down one crew hadn't hurt them in Pentos, but they'd benefited from multiple yellow flags and Robb having an off day at qualifying. Griffin's Roost was a deceptively difficult track and they would need every hand on deck to win there. 

“It's getting better. Hardly even twinges anymore except when I try to move something heavy.”

“Good,” Jaime murmured, reflexively scanning his new emails before he peered mischievously over his laptop at Brienne, who had taken the empty seat across from him. 

“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. 

“Guess what finally got published?” He spun his laptop around and pointed to the email Pod had sent to both of them. 

“Oh gods,” she groaned. “I'd forgotten we even took that photo.”

“We have to look at this before we look at the track.”

“Noooo,” she moaned. 

“It'll be great.” Jaime clicked the link and gestured for her to come around the desk. Brienne heaved an enormous sigh but she stood, her expressive eyes unable to hide their anxious twinkling. The article loaded – Women of F1 it was titled, but the pictures were mostly the wives and girlfriends of the other drivers, though there was a photo of Arya Stark glaring into the camera at the track in Braavos. He clicked next and blinked at the photo of himself and Brienne. 

“What in the seven hells?” he muttered. 

Brienne leaned over his shoulder, her straw hair falling free from behind her ear and brushing his temple. “What's wrong with it?” she asked nervously. 

“Look at you. They've airbrushed you.” He studied the changes, growing angrier with each one: they'd straightened her nose, hidden her freckles, and smoothed out her skin. They couldn't hide her height, but she looked less bulky and more elegant. 

“Just because you don't need airbrushing doesn't mean the rest of us don't,” she said. 

“You don't need airbrushing! It's not you. It should look like you.” 

“Jaime,” she said, standing abruptly and he knew without looking she was flushed, her cheeks patchy with color. “Of course they're not going to just leave me like this,” she said softly. 

“Like what? Tall and strong and covered in freckles?”

“It's fine,” she squeaked. 

“It's not,” he ground out. But she was fidgeting now, and she moved back around to the other side of the desk, all of the light from just a minute before gone, so Jaime let it lie. “Let's do the track review,” he said and though she nodded and opened up her own laptop to start the first videos, she was subdued for the next hour. 

After they watched the first ten turns so many times in a row Jaime was certain he'd be dreaming of them that night, he leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I'm calling it,” he said. “We can pick up the back half tomorrow.” 

“I don't have any plans, if you want to just push through.”

“Absolutely not.” He checked his watch for the time and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you even have dinner before you came here?”

“No. Did you?” she asked, a challenge. 

“No. Can I treat you to whatever's leftover in the cafeteria?”

Brienne made a face, sticking out her tongue in a way that was unbearably cute. “I'd rather just get food when I get home.” 

“It's Monday night, you don't have any food.”

She blinked at him, startled. “You remembered it's my shopping day.”

Jaime shrugged uncomfortably. “It's a weird day to go shopping, of course I'd remember.” 

“I think I'm going to go do that, actually, if we're done?” she asked as she stood to her full height, towering over him in his chair. He very firmly squashed the image that immediately rose up of them posed like this in his bedroom. 

“For now.”

Brienne nodded and bid him goodnight, and Jaime pulled out his phone again, staring at the message from Taena. He should text her, spend a couple of hours between her soft thighs, and stop thinking about his godsdamned race engineer for one night. 

Hours later, alone in his own apartment where he'd ended up instead, he cursed his foolishness as he had his very last cigarette on the balcony and stared out at the city lights that twinkled with the same compelling brightness as in Brienne's eyes.

* * *

“I can't get out of sixth gear.”

Brienne glanced between monitors, pressed her headphones closer to her ears. “You're stuck in sixth?”

“Can shift lower,” Jaime said over the mic, “but not higher.” 

“Shit,” she said. “Give me a minute.” 

They were in the home stretch of the race at Griffin's Roost and Jaime was in first but Robb Stark was coming up fast and now Jaime was stuck at below top speed. If he came into the garage for a pit stop the race was lost; he'd be lucky to even get points given how tight the field was and how much work would potentially need to be done to get the car running smoothly again. But leaving him out there meant Robb would draw ever closer, and there were just enough laps left that the Direwolf driver would likely pass. 

Griffin's Roost was one of the newer IAF tracks, but they'd built it in a small strip of land called the Griffin's Throat that made for a compact, twisting maze between craggy juts of rock that pushed the drivers and their cars to their limits. It was also one of the most difficult tracks to overtake on because there were so few straightaways and the ones they had were relatively short. There was always the chance that if Jaime drove perfectly, if he didn't lock his tires once, if he never gave Robb the inside space on the turns, he could hold the other car off long enough to pull it out. 

Brienne studied the overall numbers of the car, checked Jaime's and Robb's positions again on the screens, and then took a breath. Kevan would want him to box, play it safe and try to get back to p-5. But that wasn't Jaime's way, and, Brienne had discovered, it wasn't her way either. She knew he could do it, she just had to make sure he knew it, too. 

“Stay out,” she told him over the mic. 

“What?”

“Stay out there. There's not enough time to bring you in and you've got a good lead.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do about Stark?”

“Ignore him. You finish this race strong and you can win it. All you have to do is be perfect.”

“Is that all?” he said dryly, and she smothered a grin, uncomfortable with showing too much emotion with the cameras just a few feet away and trained on her. She still wasn't used to the amount of video they took just of her face, but at least she was able to mostly ignore it now. 

“What's the matter, Lannister? Can't drive one tiny little perfect race?”

“You know I can't,” he said and his tone was light but she knew he meant it. 

“I'll bet you you can.” 

“What are we betting?”

He was driving clean, but she saw in the alternate track views that Robb continued to creep up on his position. He had two laps at most before things got serious, and then just five laps after that that he would have to hold onto for p-1. 

“If you lose this race, you have to not argue with me about pit stops at Riverrun in two weeks.” 

“And if I win today?”

“Then you win,” she said. “And I'll let you push me in the winners' pool at Lannisport next month.”

“You're assuming I'll win at Lannisport.”

“Yes.” 

His chuckle was low and strained. “I feel like I'm getting swindled but I'm too busy to figure out how. Deal.” 

Brienne nodded and rubbed her hands over her hot cheeks, knowing the audio and the cameras had picked up every moment of that exchange. She rewound it quickly in her head, decided she had stayed on the side of friendly banter, and watched the last laps of Jaime's race. 

Robb took an extra lap to come up behind Jaime and with four laps to go she said, “he's behind you. You've got this” with all the confidence she had in Jaime's incredible skills. There was no man on the track today that she would have trusted to do this besides him, and few in all of racing's past. Robb Stark could smell blood on the air and he came hard again and again, only to be cut off by a perfectly timed turn or a weave that took away just enough space that Robb couldn't overtake. Brienne barely breathed for the last minute of the race, her eyes glued to the screen as Robb nudged and pushed and desperately tried to find a path around Jaime's slower car. 

On the penultimate turn, Jaime cut across the apex in a curve as beautiful and smooth as the crest of a wave, making Brienne's heart clench, and then Robb's tires locked as he pressed too hard trying to catch up, and Jaime pulled a half second ahead, the car soaring under the wildly waving checkered flag while Brienne and the crew that had poured out of the garage to watch from the wall screamed and hugged each other, jumping up and down. 

“Holy shit! Holy shit!” Brienne yelled, first as she pounded Bronn on the back and then again as Podrick wrapped himself around her for a quick, fierce hug. On the nearest apron Jaime turned celebratory donuts, tires squealing, the taste of rubber filling the air. The crowd was wild, the Lannister red and gold section throwing hats and shirts and programs in the air. 

As Jaime pulled his car into the parc fermé, the crews swarmed the barriers, shouting and cheering him as he undid his steering wheel and hopped up on top of the car, his arms raised in victory. Jaime jumped down as elegant as any lion, and pulled off his helmet and neck brace, tucking them under his arm. He aimed straight for Brienne, his whole face bright and shining as the sun, and for a moment she couldn't breathe. Even sweaty and clearly worn out from the intensity of the race, he was as beautiful a man as she'd ever seen. Her body leaned towards him as he came nearer, her heart pounding. 

“I won,” he said, beaming at her. 

“I told you so.”

Jaime laughed, a booming waterfall of golden sound. “And now I get to push you in the pool.” 

“You have to win there first,” she said archly. His happy grin reminded Brienne of the pictures from when he was young, but the force of it on his older, handsome face was tenfold. 

Bronn punched Jaime on the shoulder and his grin scrunched into a grimace before the rest of the crew lapped forward and took Jaime away to celebrate with him. She watched him enjoying himself and her heart beat soft and warm in her chest with pleasure. 

“I can't believe he fucking did it,” Arya Stark said from behind Brienne. 

Brienne turned to smile down at her. They'd run into each other on several tracks, and Arya always had a bluntly astute opinion to give about the race and the men around them. “I knew he could.” 

“You were the only one. Direwolf was celebrating until the last lap.”

“Race isn't over until the flag.”

“I tried to tell them, but they don't like to listen to young women.” 

Brienne nodded sympathetically. “Most of them don't listen to older women, either.” 

“Jaime does,” Arya said, watching Brienne so closely that Brienne's neck itched as she felt a flush rise to the surface. 

“He does. That's why I'm his race engineer.”

“This is the best he's ever driven, you know. Even from before.”

“It's all coming together for him,” Brienne said weakly. 

“Why don't we hear more about you? You're the real reason behind it, everyone knows it. Do the reporters not want to listen either?”

“They won't stop listening,” Brienne said. “I don't like doing interviews. I get nervous. I say the wrong things.”

“You did fine at the beginning of the season, that one with Melisandre.”

“Jaime handled most of that. Though she did ask me to do a one-on-one,” Brienne admitted.

Arya looked annoyed that Brienne hadn't already leapt at the chance. “You should do it! You have to get the respect you're due.”

Brienne chewed her bottom lip. The crews and cameras ebbed and flowed around them, two rocks in a steady stream of activity. “It's not that simple,” she said quietly. 

“What if we did a Women in F1 interview together with her then?”

“You and me?”

“Do you see any other women out here?” she asked, gesturing at the sea of men around them. There were women engineers on some of the other teams, but Brienne had the most visibility of any woman in the sport that wasn't a reporter, and Arya's connection to her family gave her more than most. Rumor had it she also had been the initiating mind behind Direwolf's new wing design, which had given their team better downforce than anyone else in the field. Brienne had peered intently at the Direwolf cars over and over trying to figure out how they'd achieved it, but whatever it was was too subtle to see from a distant inspection. 

“I'll see if she's interested, I guess,” Brienne said. At least having Arya there meant it was less likely Melisandre would poke and prod at Brienne's time with Griffin, and she could make avoidance of that topic a requirement for the interview at all. “I'll let you know.”

They were exchanging numbers in their phones when Hyle walked up, his sweaty brown hair smoothed back from his high forehead. “Ladies,” he said in a cheerfully patronizing tone. 

Arya looked up and gave him a look so intensely unwelcoming that Hyle's step stuttered, his open smile drifting for a moment before he reeled it back again. “What do you want?” she asked in a tone as lethal as her stare. 

Hyle swallowed hard. “Just to talk to Brienne. If you have a minute?”

“The trophy presentation will be starting soon,” Brienne said.

“It will be quick. But it is private.” 

Arya glanced questioningly at Brienne, and then shrugged when Brienne nodded at her. “Don't forget to ask Melisandre,” she said as she was leaving. “You deserve it!”

Brienne ignored Hyle's obvious curiosity. “What do you want?”

“I know this isn't a great place for this, but you're hard to pin down. I just wanted to apologize, for what happened at Griffin.” 

As always happened when she thought of Griffin, Brienne was transported back to that cold garage, and the rose Connington had thrown at her feet, a petal lying torn off next to it. But this time, she recalled him on the floor of the bar, too, looking as beat up as his rose. Even coming here to Griffin's Roost hadn't been as agonizing as she'd expected when she'd seen it looming on the schedule. After the initial nerves when she stepped off the bus, she'd been too busy to give it much thought until Hyle appeared. “Why?” Brienne asked now, scrambling for calm. 

“You ran out of there pretty quick and never came back, so I assume you felt hurt by our dumb joke,” he said, clearly confused. 

“That's not-” She shook her head. “I mean why now?”

“It's not like we run in the same circles, when would I have done it before now?”

“Maybe the last time you talked to me? Or you could have emailed me five years ago when it actually happened!”

Hyle's lips thinned but he nodded. “Fine, I could have done it years ago. I honestly didn't think you'd still care.”

“You asked me out as a _joke_, Hyle, you all did. That stays with a person.”

She could see it in his eyes: _you're being too emotional_ and _why are you not accepting my apology_ but his mouth said, “you're right. And that's why I'm here now.” 

“Fine, you've apologized.” Brienne glanced to the podium a short distance away; the crowd was already gathering underneath it, anxious for the ceremony to start. 

“Ok,” Hyle said slowly, clearly waiting for more from her, but Brienne just met his hazel-eyed stare and remained quiet. He would get no forgiveness from her today, not when she only wanted him and the memories he carried with him gone. “I'll see you around the track,” he sighed and Brienne didn't even bother to watch him go. But she didn't feel settled again until she saw Jaime on top of the podium, smiling down at her.

* * *

Brienne didn't see Hyle again for three weeks, and she didn't think of him once. They were too busy for one thing; Riverrun was the next race after Griffin's Roost and their only goal was to get Jaime in a position to win and pull ahead in the World Championship title race. When he actually did, he'd been so ecstatic he jumped the barrier into the pit crew's arms, and they'd surfed him over to where Brienne was standing, waiting for their usual post-race smile and appropriately distanced fist-bump or high-five.

Except this time Jaime had regained his balance, grinned, and hugged her. Which had been fine in the moment, if surprising, the ball lightning energy of him swarming over and through her before it was gone again when he let go and moved on to shaking Kevan's hand next to her. She'd blinked and chalked her breathlessness up to the excitement of his win. 

But then she showed up Monday afternoon for their scheduled planning meeting and though he only said “Short prep week this week” in a business-like manner when she walked in, her first thought wasn't “let's get to it, then” or a sarcastic “good afternoon to you, too,” but wondering what his soft t-shirt would feel like against her cheek. It startled her so badly she didn't say anything at all until he said, “hello? Radio check?” and she flushed and rolled her eyes. 

“Sorry, I was thinking about that awful joke you told me on lap 32 yesterday.”

“Awful?” he said, feigning offense. “Parc fern! That's hilarious!” Then he turned the monitor towards her with the track already onscreen and they got to work as usual, her brief mental indiscretion forgotten. 

The rest of the week went much the same. 

Everything would be normal, the two of them working side-by-side arguing over his cornering choices and then she'd think about laying her head on his shoulder and it all suddenly became too much for a moment until the ghost of his arms around her, strong and sure and warm, had disappeared again. 

_What the fuck?_ she thought.

Brienne had admittedly not hugged many people in her life, but even she knew this was absurd. It was just a hug. There had been nothing special about it; she and Pod had hugged just the week before and she hadn't spent all week struck by him when he handed her a screwdriver. 

_Get it together, Tarth_, she ordered herself, and she did. Mostly. 

Until that weekend at The Twins – which had been a breeze thanks to Ramsay managing to completely ruin Robb's race with a crash on the first lap – when Jaime flew under the checkered flag at p1 and drove to the parc fermé and Brienne had butterflies as she watched him pull off his helmet and grin at her. Anxious, excited butterflies that felt like they were driving their own F1 race in her stomach. 

Jaime went straight to her and wrapped his arms around her again, her own arms sliding perfectly into place in return, and she realized exactly how well they fit against each other, like their bodies had been poured from molds meant to be welded together to make the engine whole. This wasn't the comfortable embrace of excited friends, this was like coming home to Tarth after the worst experience of her life, when the sharp sea spray and cool wind and sunny forests had enveloped and settled her. Jaime smelled like dirt and sweat and gasoline and it had taken every ounce of willpower to not cling to his strong shoulders and bury her nose in the side of his neck and breathe him in. 

This was decidedly not the way a race engineer should feel about their driver. Even Lancel hugged his crew when he finished top three, and no one saw Theodan following him around with big puppy dog eyes. 

Brienne had learned distance – emotional and physical – were the best defense from the cruelties of the world, but the concept seemed alien to Jaime. He was always too close: his emotions too close to the surface, his body too close to hers, his blinding smile too close to convincing her he saw her as more than just his friend. 

They needed that distance now. Space. A heart condom. 

When she walked into his office Monday after the win and found him there with a clothes box in his hands and a hopeful, nervous light in his eyes, Brienne suspected her heart condom was about to spring a leak. 

“What's that?” she asked, cautious. 

“It's for you.”

“Why?”

Jaime rolled his eyes. “Can't I get my race engineer a present? We're ahead in the championship race and that is in no small part to you.” 

A thank you gift. She should have known. “You didn't have to, you already pay me to do just this thing.”

“I don't pay you, my father does,” he said, the corners of his mouth dipping down. “Will you just take the gift already?”

Brienne sighed but took the present, opened the unwrapped box with only the slightest tremor in her hands. Inside was a silky pool of royal blue fabric, and Brienne pulled it out, the dress unrolling in her hands, the skirt flowing like a waterfall to the floor. 

“It's beautiful,” she said, confused. “But why did you get it?”

“Because I'm asking you to come to an event with me and I thought the bribery would help.” 

“I have a dress.” 

Jaime gave her a dryly amused stare. “Yes, a single dress. I thought you might think it was fun to have a second one.” 

Brienne's fingers curled into the cloth. “I'd rather have that new Arthur Dayne book and time to read it,” she muttered. 

“I don't think you looked all the way in the box,” he said with a sly smile and when she tugged the tissue paper aside she saw Arthur Dayne's book underneath. 

_Oh_, she thought, her heart stumbling a little before she could right it again. 

“I can only give you the one, though. Time off is harder to come by.” She blinked at him, so thrown by his gift she didn't know what to say. High spots of color appeared on his cheeks; he even blushed attractively. “It's okay if you don't like the dress, I can take it back,” he said. Brienne glared down at her own feet in their men's size work boots peeking out under the rich fabric in her hands. 

“It's just...I can't wear something like this,” she said, holding it up against her body. “I know what kind of comments I'll get if I do.”

“You shouldn't care what people think about you. Except me, of course,” he added, a teasing light in his face. 

“How would you know?” she asked sharply, and he gave her a quiet look that knocked the anger out of her. For most of his adult life he'd born the weight of a truth that was the least of what he was, just like her. Of course he'd know. 

“It will look nice on you,” he said, soft, and she felt her face heat. “Perfect for the occasion.” 

“What _is_ this event?” Brienne asked, suddenly suspicious.

“It's tomorrow night.”

“That doesn't tell me what it is.” 

Jaime tugged at the tissue paper, his fingers crinkling the corner. “You may have seen the invitation that went out, about my father's 60th birthday party.”

“Oh no.” 

“I have to go or I risk squandering any goodwill we've managed to gain this season. I figured since I have to go,” he glanced up at her from under his unfairly long lashes, “maybe you would go with me.”

This was the exact opposite of putting more space between them. This was essentially a friend date. “Jaime-”

“Things are more fun when you're around, Wrench.”

“Even at birthday parties for tyrants?”

Jaime grinned like a mischievous boy. “_Especially_ then.” 

She absolutely should not go, the more rational and wiser part of her brain warned her. It would not help at all with the distance her heart needed to defend itself. She should not go, but she wanted to, because she liked spending time with Jaime. He was still aggravating, but in a way that now inevitably ended with him making her laugh. He was still egotistical and selfish, but she knew how much of that was a response to hurt as was her own polite stoicism. Though the want of it occasionally bubbled up inside her, Brienne knew what was between them could never be more than friendship and surely knowing that going in would protect her if his eyes went too soft or his smile too warm. 

Jaime watched her expectantly, and it was the knowledge that if she said no and gave him the dress back he'd force her to keep the book and probably give her the evening off to read it that had her sighing in acceptance. 

His whole face lit up, knowing he had her. “I hope I don't regret this,” she muttered, running the smooth fabric between her rough fingers.

* * *

The next race was up north in Winterfell but it wasn't for two weeks, so Tywin Lannister had taken the power move of inviting every other racing team to King's Landing in the middle of the season to celebrate himself. Sandor dropped Brienne off in front of the same hotel where they'd had the car launch party, and she breathed through the memory of Jaime drunk and angry, of Cersei and the rest of the Lannisters' cold disdain. _It will be different this time_, she assured her racing heart, and as though he'd heard her, Jaime was there. He looked stunned at the sight of her, his eyes gleaming.

“You look great,” he said, offering her his arm. 

“Thank you.” 

“I have impeccable taste.”

Brienne laughed aloud and shook her head. She had to admit he couldn't have chosen a better design or size for her. It fell all the way to the floor with a fashionable but not too low vee in the neck that made her small breasts seem like a benefit and not a flaw. The sleeves were long and slightly gauzy, covering and softening her too-muscular shoulders and arms; the skirt had a slit up to mid-thigh, though it flowed enough she could hide it when she stood still; and even she couldn't deny the color suited her eyes. Brienne gingerly took Jaime's arm and let him lead her in as cameras flashed all around them. 

They followed the signs through the lobby to the huge ballroom, which was crowded with what looked like most of the racing community. Drivers and crew and executives were all dressed in their finest, holding drinks and small plates filled with expensive food while a band played light jazz music. The space had been decorated in gold: golden flowers in crystal bowls on the tables, golden silk drapes along the walls, golden lights glimmering through the room. Jaime let go of her arm as they entered and she felt suddenly alone though he was still standing right there. 

“Now what?” she asked, looking around for Connington, wondering if he'd even show. 

“Now we deal with my brother,” he said, nodding at Tyrion who was navigating the crowd to get to them. 

“Brienne!” he said, ignoring Jaime. “That dress is incredible on you,” he said with a low whistle, and Brienne felt the heat rush over her face and down her neck. 

“Jaime got it for me,” she said weakly. 

“Did he really?” Tyrion lifted his eyebrows and glanced at his brother. “That's a surprise. I'm afraid I'm behind the curve now. What can I get you, Brienne? A drink? A snack? An excuse to leave early so you don't have to suffer the rest of our family again?”

“Tyrion,” Jaime said, frowning. 

“What? I'm ugly and the wrong height, too, I think I know how Brienne feels better than you.”

“Don't say that,” Jaime said fiercely. 

“It's okay,” she said. “He's not wrong.” 

Jaime grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I'm going to get a drink. Do you want something?”

“Dry martini,” Tyrion said and laughed when Jaime glared at him. 

“Just some water for now, please.” 

“Water, got it. You get your own drink,” Jaime said to Tyrion before he left them alone. 

“Siblings,” Tyrion said with a small smile. “So troublesome.” 

Brienne swallowed down the sudden grief that rose up from where it normally lay dormant, as persistent as the famed White Walkers of children's horror stories. Even all these years later she would sometimes miss her brother or her mother so intensely it was as though they'd died only the day before. Galladon would have been thrilled with her new job, would have begged to go with her to this party, and would have made friends with everyone he met. If only he'd had the chance. 

“My apologies, I didn't think,” Tyrion said quietly. 

“It's all right.” Brienne smiled to herself. “My brother and I used to kick each other trying to make room for our legs on the couch. I'd usually win and then he'd take all the blankets down with him onto the floor. I'd get so mad at him but I didn't want to give up my hard-won couch, so I'd cover myself with the pillows. Then of course he'd sit on me complaining about the lumpy couch.” She laughed a little and blinked, returning from their warm living room back to this coolly decorated party. 

“It sounds like you had a good relationship,” he said, tentative. 

“We were like any other siblings, I suppose. I loved him even when I hated him. You have siblings, you know.” 

“With Jaime, yes. Cersei and I only have the hate part.” He shrugged. “I should warn you she's here tonight.”

“I assumed she would be.” 

“She's with Robert, so she's in a particularly spiteful mood. I'd steer clear of her if I were you.”

Brienne couldn't imagine Cersei being more sharply bitter than she'd been in their previous, brief encounters and she nodded. “I'll keep that in mind.” 

“You should steer clear of Jaime, too,” Tyrion went on, watching her intently. 

“What?”

“The racing community is small and full of gossips. People will assume the most salacious outcome of everything. They'll talk. Jaime doesn't care about his reputation and his honor is long since in disrepair, but yours is not, and neither is Lannister Corp's.” 

“But nothing's going on, I'm just his engineer.” 

“He bought you a dress, he took you to his father's birthday. I'm sure he'll plan to spend much of the evening by your side. Don't leave with him tonight, unless you want people to think you're going to his bed.” 

Brienne blushed hotly and she looked down at their feet. “I would never,” she murmured. But she knew Tyrion was right; half of the people she met assumed they'd already had sex and that was why she was his race engineer at all, even though they'd barely even touched each other until recently. Now that they were friends it would only set tongues wagging harder. 

She glanced up and saw Jaime was returning with three drinks. He was waylaid by one of the Lannister Corp higher-ups and he rolled his eyes at them over the man's shoulder. 

“I don't mean to worry you,” Tyrion said. “I'm just trying to watch out for the company, and for your career. You're very good, Brienne, I'd hate to see you fail because of Jaime's recklessness.” 

“I appreciate your concern,” Brienne whispered. Jaime extricated himself and returned to them and she took the water with a shaking hand, draining it quickly. 

Jaime laughed when she was done. “Don't make me go get another one already, Wrench.” 

“It's fine.” She looked around desperately for a reason to leave, saw Arya off a little ways talking to another young woman. “I'm going to go say hi,” she said. 

Jaime followed her line of sight. “Ah the Stark girl. I'll go with you, she's a hoot.” 

“No,” she said, and then added quickly when he frowned, “I should branch out on my own. You don't have to babysit me all night, I know other people want to talk to you. Look, there's Cersei,” she added when she felt the woman's narrowed-eyed glare. “I'll see you around the party.” 

Brienne hurried off, leaving Jaime looking confused behind her. Tyrion was right, she couldn't let his nearly puppy-like friendship make people assume the worst for either of them. Brienne would never let herself be driven out of her dream job by the gossip of the obnoxious crowds, but there was no reason to make things harder for either of them while she was here and surely Jaime would want to immediately squash any rumors that he was with her; he'd been quick enough to do so with the team when she'd first arrived. 

As she neared Arya, the smaller woman looked up and smiled wide. “Brienne! Holy shit look at you.”

Brienne tugged at the leg slit to hold it closed over her leg and smiled shyly. “Hello. You look wonderful.” She did, dressed in a sharply cut gray men's suit that matched her eyes with a thin black tie hanging loose around her neck, her brown hair loose around her head. 

“Smash the patriarchy,” Arya grinned and the other young woman she was talking to, tall and slender with bright blue eyes and auburn hair in a stylish up-do, shook her head. “This is my sister, Sansa.” Though she tried to hide her shock, Brienne knew she'd failed when Arya laughed. “Don't worry, we get that reaction all the time.” 

Sansa smiled, a gentle, pretty curve of her lips, and held out her hand. “Brienne Tarth,” she said knowingly. “It's wonderful to meet you.” 

Though her hand was delicate, her grip was strong. She looked as fragile and elegant as a bird but there was the same raptor's light in her eyes that reminded Brienne of Arya. “It's a pleasure to meet you. Are you involved in your family's racing team?”

“Only tangentially. I'm a fashion designer, so I provide some suggestions whenever they want to update their uniforms.” She took in Brienne's dress and nodded. “That dress does suit you well. You should wear silver heels with it next time.” Brienne had only had her black flats, but the long skirt hid them well enough. 

“Heels? I'm too tall already.” 

“Yes, so why not make a statement about it?” 

Brienne shook her head, blushing. “I'm not one for statements.”

“Your being where you are in F1 is a statement.”

“I'd rather just focus on the work.”

“Exactly,” Arya said. “Stop worrying about how people are dressed, Sansa.”

Sansa rolled her eyes. “I'm just giving her some advice. She's got lovely legs, if you don't mind me saying, and the heels would help highlight that.” 

“I don't really want people looking at my legs.” 

“It's too late for that,” Sansa said, nodding, and Brienne turned to discover the red-haired crewman from Stark's team was openly admiring her. 

“Ugh, Tormund,” Arya said. The man tugged on his ill-fitting suit, smoothed a big hand over his wild hair, and started towards them. “Run,” Arya whispered but Brienne just stood there, awkward and stuck. 

Tormund had eyes only for Brienne, smiling widely at her. “Good evening,” he said. “You haven't had a chance to meet me yet, but I know you. You're Brienne, the Kingslayer's engineer. I'm Tormund. Some call me Giantsbane.”

“Or Giantsbutt,” Arya said, and Tormund glared at her. 

“Ignore her.” He took Brienne's hand without asking and brought it to his lips, kissing her open-mouthed and wet on the top of it. She glanced at Arya over his bowed head, who made a gagging motion. “I've been wanting to meet you,” Tormund said as he stood. “I was hoping to talk to you this evening.” 

Sansa tugged on Arya's arm. “Come on, let's leave them to get to know each other.” Arya looked apologetic but she left with her sister anyway. Tormund stepped closer. 

“You stand out in the pits. So much woman in that jumpsuit.” 

Brienne's face twisted. “Uh, that's not-”

“I speak too freely, I know. But surely you understand how attractive you are.” 

“There's no need to be rude,” she said fiercely, and Tormund blinked, surprised. 

“I'm being honest. So many women you could break just looking at them funny, but not you.” 

Brienne shut her eyes, feeling uglier than ever. Only men who thought she'd put up with their roughness were ever even remotely interested in her. She would never find a man who would give her softness instead. 

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice said, and Brienne's eyes flew open to see Hyle Hunt there. “Brienne, sorry to interrupt but can I talk to you?”

“She's talking to me,” Tormund said, bristling. 

Brienne glanced between them, wished for a moment that Jaime would come over but he had his back to her and was talking with Cersei and her husband. “I can talk for a minute,” she said, deciding on the bad option she at least knew. Tormund grumbled and stalked away and Hyle snorted. 

“You're welcome,” he said and Brienne stiffened. 

“I didn't ask for your help.” 

“You didn't have to, your body was yelling for it.” He looked her up and down with curiosity, a look she was all too familiar with from when she'd gone to her only school dance: why are you even wearing a dress? it said; why are you trying to be womanly? “You look nice,” he said out loud. 

She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked somewhere near his shoulder. “Thanks. You don't have to stay, I can take care of myself.”

“I did actually want to talk to you, but,” he looked over towards Jaime, “not here. Can we find somewhere more private?”

“Why?”

“It's about work, I promise. Look, we can just head over towards that back wall, there's a quiet place there and we don't have to leave the whole party.” He pointed towards an alcove tucked into the corner of the room, where there would be enough room for them to talk and some distance from the band and the chatter of the guests. 

“All right,” she assented, following him, holding her skirt as closed as possible as she walked. There was room in the alcove for four people, but it still felt uncomfortably close being here alone with Hyle. Brienne hugged her arms over her chest and stared at him. “So what do you want?”

“I want you to join my team.” 

She gaped at him. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely. I know this is a weird place to ask but it would have been weirder on the track, trust me.”

“Jaime's winning. Why would I leave a winning team?”

“He'll fuck it up, Brienne, he always does. You deserve better than going down in flames with Lannister.”

“I deserve better?” she spit out, shocked and furious. “Where was that when I was on Griffin? I deserved better then, too.”

“You did. I'm sorry.” 

She glared at him, annoyed with his immediate apology. “Why do you even want me? You have a race engineer.”

“I do. But I need a new mechanic and you have enough experience now I could hire you.”

“So you're trying to poach me after Jaime already took the chance.”

“A chance he had to take, even you know that.” 

“Forget it,” she hissed. 

“I know you're still mad at me and that's fine, but at least consider it. The offer will be open for a little while. I just hope you take it before Lannister ruins your chances.” 

She wanted to shove him; her hands tensed, ready for it, not caring what he would do to her career when she did, when Jaime appeared in the alcove. 

“There you are, Wrench,” Jaime said, glancing briefly at Hyle. “Was just seeing if you needed another drink yet.” He searched her face, his eyes full of questions. 

“A drink would be good.” She glared one last time at Hyle and he just shook his head.

“Think about it,” he said quietly, pushing past Jaime to leave the alcove. 

“Hope I didn't disturb anything romantic,” Jaime said, his tone unexpectedly bitter. 

“You didn't.” 

“What did he want?”

“It's none of your business,” she snapped. Every part of her was on edge like she was too-aggressively cornering around a hairpin turn, the wheels barely holding on. 

“Was it personal?” he pressed, eyes glittering. 

“It was work-related.”

“Then it is my business.”

“I don't work for you, remember, I work for your father.” 

“You're _my_ race engineer. We're a team,” he said, his voice heated and hurt. She remembered the first day of pre-season, when he'd told her how his other crews had betrayed him. 

She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, bringing everything back under control. “Hyle asked me to work for him. I told him no right before you showed up.” 

Jaime exhaled, too, and nodded, the lines on his forehead easing. “Thank you,” he said and she smiled a little, accelerating out of the turn back onto smooth road. 

“For telling you or for saying no?”

“Both.” He shifted nearer and the alcove felt suddenly far too intimate. “It means a lot.” 

Brienne swallowed dryly. Jaime was in a perfectly tailored dark suit, wearing a tie she realized now that matched the color of her dress, and she had the not unwelcome image of pulling him even closer with it.

He licked his lips, a quick slide of his pink tongue over their softness. “As pleasantly removed as this alcove is,” he said, his voice resonating deep inside her, “we should probably rejoin everyone else. Unless you're ready to leave? We haven't had cake yet but I can take you home if you want.”

Tyrion's warning was loud in her ears. “No, that's okay. Sandor will give me a ride in a bit. I was going to go say hi to Pod and Bronn.”

“Okay. We can see if Pod conned Bronn into doing his tie as usual.” 

“I can go alone.”

Jaime's smile wavered, wobbly as a loose hubcap. “Do I stink or something?”

“No,” she said quickly. He smelled amazing, if she were honest; he was wearing some fresh and earthy cologne she hadn't noticed on him before but it suited him well. It reminded her of Tarth, when the sea wind blew in over the meadows. “I just don't want you to think you have to hang around with me. I can manage on my own. Gods know I'm used to it.” 

“This isn't a burden, Brienne. I asked you to come with me.” 

Hearing him say her name made her heart pound; he was always so gentle with it on his tongue. “You were just being nice,” she protested. 

“By making you attend a party you didn't want to go to?”

“People will talk,” she blurted out and he straightened, his head pulling back. “About us,” she added miserably. “If we spend too much time together. You know how people are, what they already think about me. I don't want to make it worse for either of us.” 

“I don't care-”

“I do. This job is everything I never even dared to dream about and if people think I only got it because you...because we...” she shook her head fiercely. “I don't mind being your, your friend and your race engineer, but I can't just ignore the reality of what people think even if it's wrong. I don't have a rich father to pay off gossip magazines.” 

His cleanly-shaven jaw tightened under his golden skin and she wanted to soothe away the tension there so much it nearly knocked her down. 

“You're right. I don't want to ruin your reputation,” he said and she regretted ever agreeing to coming here with him. It wasn't his fault she had so little self-control where he was concerned. “Mine has nowhere left to fall.”

“That's not true.”

“It is and you know it. Isn't that why Hyle asked you to work for him? I've been winning. I'm ahead in the World Championship points. He wouldn't have even considered it if you were working for Robb Stark. Not even if you were working for fucking Euron or Loras. Why would anyone possibly want to work for the Kingslayer?”

“You're a good driver, Jaime.”

“I'm the best.”

“Maybe.” 

He snorted. “See? You love the truth.”

“That's why you trust me. And why you listen to me. I believe in you, I believe that you're more than the Kingslayer. That's why I'm staying. But I have to watch out for myself, too. I want to build a life in Formula 1. It's not either of our faults that people can't look past who we are, but that doesn't mean I can ignore it.”

“Would you let Bronn drive you home?”

Brienne's brow creased. “What?”

“Tonight. If they offered, you'd let Bronn or Podrick drive you home, wouldn't you?” She opened her mouth to protest but she couldn't when she knew the truth. He smiled, bitter. “So it is my fault.”

“Jaime-”

“It's fine. I shouldn't have-” he stopped himself, looking down and away for a moment that felt like a lifetime. “I don't blame you,” he finally said, quiet. “You have to protect yourself. You've got too much possibility ahead of you, and we have a lot of months left. If we win the World Championship it will change your whole career.” He smiled at her, but it was a dim shadow of what she was used to. “Let me escort you out of this alcove at least, it will look less suspicious. I'll head home after that.”

“You don't have to.”

“I showed my face long enough to mollify my uncle. My father of course is impossible to please.” He gestured for her to precede him. She wanted to apologize but she wasn't even sure for what. Everything both of them said had been the truth. _Mostly the truth_, she thought, thinking again of his arms around her in their shared excitement, of him standing over Connington, of how he'd gotten her the perfect dress and the book she wanted; as she stepped out of the alcove she pressed a fist against the hard knot in her chest. 

“Jaime,” she said as he joined her and then stopped. What could she say? She'd wanted more distance, and Tyrion had been right to remind her she needed it for more than just her heart. “I'll see you tomorrow,” she said, the words weak and useless. 

“Good. We have a lot of work to do for Winterfell and I still need my race engineer's help.” 

The pain behind her ribs eased a little. “Bright and early,” she agreed. She left his side for Pod and Bronn, but she watched him make his goodbyes to Tyrion and Cersei, watched him look around the party at the entrance to the ballroom and catch her staring. He smiled a little, nodded once, and then was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what I was using as Brienne's dress: https://www.lulus.com/products/wondrous-water-lilies-royal-blue-maxi-dress/285762.html)
> 
> Also Jaime's experience with the inability to shift was taken from Daniel Ricciardo's race last year at Monaco (https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/136340/ricciardo-we-got-home-just-using-six-gears), but it's happened other times in F1 as well, like when Schumacher came in 2nd at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1994 with only fifth gear. F1 is WILD y'all. Take the end of this year's Brazilian Grand Prix, for instance. No one saw that coming.


	10. July

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Cersei was one wineglass too many in at family get-togethers, she would sometimes call Jaime “the stupidest Lannister,” but he'd never felt like it was true until the alcove at his father's party when Brienne had worn the dress he'd carefully picked out and gently – rightly – pushed him away.
> 
> He hadn't known at first all that he had wanted, until there'd been a moment in the alcove when her lips had parted just a little and he had realized-
> 
> _Nothing_, he told himself fiercely. _We're just friends._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. Due to some (positive) change in circumstances this weekend as well as realizing that the chapter I was working on actually needs to be split into two chapters which means I did in fact finish my chapter requirement for the week, combined with the fact that I've been wanting to share this particular chapter for awhile, I decided to post again because I have exactly as much patience for waiting as Jaime does. Two chapters a week is DEFINITELY not going to become a thing though because I need that four-to-five week chapter padding to give myself enough comfort that I can continue to meet a chapter-a-week posting schedule until I finish writing. I'm also hoping that I can get a bunch of writing done at the end of December to put me 6-7 chapters ahead; I'm betting on myself.

When Cersei was one wineglass too many in at family get-togethers, she would sometimes call Jaime “the stupidest Lannister,” but he'd never felt like it was true until the alcove at his father's party when Brienne had worn the dress he'd carefully picked out and gently – rightly – pushed him away.

He hadn't known at first all that he had wanted, until there'd been a moment in the alcove when her lips had parted just a little and he had realized-

_Nothing_, he told himself fiercely. _We're just friends._

It wasn't his fault that the long, pale line of her leg slipping out from the slit in her dress had sent his mind and body into a tailspin as she'd let herself out of the car. Even friends could have fantastic legs. 

No, the fault was entirely with the second hug they'd shared. That had been where it all went wrong. 

He hadn't planned on hugging her the first time; he'd just been _happy_ and it had been a spontaneous response to seeing her there looking happy for him, her face glowing like a beacon calling him home. 

But at The Twins, as soon as the checkered flag came down his first thought was for Brienne and she'd welcomed his embrace with a nervous, hopeful smile, her arms folding around him like they'd been made for it and Jaime had wished for a long, heated moment that they could have stayed wrapped around each other late into the evening. Even through the post-race weigh-in and podium ceremony and interviews, at the back of his thoughts was the constant, pleasant memory of her body pressed too-briefly against his. 

A smarter Lannister would have immediately distanced himself. Becoming friends, rediscovering his long-dormant better nature, those had been difficult bridges he was not sure he'd make it safely across a second time if – when – the nearness of his heart tripped him up. But, no. He'd bought her gifts and invited her to his father's birthday and then been keenly aware of every eye that followed her. First that obnoxiously overbearing Direwolf crewman had swarmed into her space and then Hyle Hunt had whisked her off to a dark corner to do who knew what. Jaime had waited as long as he could not hearing a word Tyrion was saying before he excused himself to go find out what they were up to. 

It would have hurt less if they _had_ been kissing. At least that he would've had a fighting chance against; there was no way Hyle was a better kisser than he was and the wall of that alcove would have been the perfect place to prove it. But there was no argument Jaime could muster against the state of the world and the sorrier state of his own reputation holding Brienne down. She deserved better than being saddled with Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer and all-around selfish jerk. 

It he'd been anyone but himself, he might have encouraged her to go to Hyle's team now, or right after the last race before summer break, where he'd have had a few weeks to lick his wounds and find someone else who could never live up to her. Anything to keep her from getting stuck down in the mire with him when this fairy tale season inevitably came crashing to a stop. 

But he wanted her goofy smile and her mesmerizing eyes and her sharp barbs and her ephemeral Brienne-ness in his life as long as he could cling to it. And if it meant he'd have to be her friend-but-not-too-much while he occasionally needed to lock himself in his office until his inappropriate erection calmed down, then he would do it and consider himself lucky.

The morning after the party, he'd run into Brienne in the hall and her cheeks had reddened and she'd tucked back the hair that never stayed where she wanted it and his heart had swelled and then clenched hard in his chest. 

“I've got another joke,” he'd said and her shoulders had relaxed a little as she rolled her eyes. 

“Save it for the track, Lannister.”

“It's really good.”

“I really doubt that.” 

“Come on, don't you want to hear a joke?”

“Fine.”

“Janos Slynt's driving.” She'd looked expectantly at him and he'd frowned. “Get it? His driving is a joke.”

“Oh for-” Brienne had started back down the hallway, shaking her head. 

“It's funny!” he'd called after her retreating form. When she'd flipped him off he'd felt the tightness in his chest release. Jaime had already spent a good portion of his life feeling like he was badly juggling chainsaws. How much harder could it be juggling his feelings for Brienne with the reality of their relationship? 

“Fucking impossible,” Jaime sighed now, rubbing his eyes and shutting off his computer for the night. He'd lost hours today brooding over his race engineer and they had another early day tomorrow prepping for the next two races, two of the most challenging Grands Prix on the circuit: Winterfell and Lannisport. 

Winterfell was a northern town known for its relentless winters, mosquito-filled summers, and intense love of locally crafted everything, from beers to barstools. It was the polar opposite of the only other race in July, the Lannisport Grand Prix. Lannisport was the original home of IAF and a glittering, sunburned jewel of a city that promised every panacea for your troubles for the small price of brand new ones. 

Both cities had wildly different tracks that required totally different approaches both in the mechanics of the car and how they were driven. The Winterfell Grand Prix was many drivers' dream: built under the supervision of Direwolf Racing and the Starks who owned it, it had one of the longest straightaways in all of Formula 1, a design built for soft tires and high speeds, the premier track for generating downforce, which of course was Direwolf's strength. Winning on that track required keeping up with a company that spent all year preparing for it. Lannisport was a city track and required a picture perfect qualifying run for the best starting position and a tense, exhausting race to make it seventy-eight laps without crashing through the narrow turns and tunnels. 

Thinking about Brienne was not going to help him win either one of those races but he clearly wasn't going to stop doing it tonight. He may as well do it at home with some alcohol and maybe one more cigarette. His very last secret pack was down to the remaining few sticks, but with Brienne out of reach he could at least allow himself this indulgence. 

Most everyone else had gone for the night, though as Jaime wound through the hall he saw several engineers still hunched over desks, some talking quietly, fingers tapping on their keyboards. As he stepped through the doorway into the front lobby, Jaime noticed two figures standing near each other outside, just out of the reach of the streetlight so that he didn't realize it was his father and uncle until he'd opened the doors. 

The summer wind ruffled warm and gentle over his skin, bringing their conversation with it. “You have to do something about this,” his father was saying. Kevan nodded before meeting Jaime's eyes. His uncle's mouth dropped open in what looked almost like fear. Tywin turned his head a little as Jaime hesitated uncertainly behind them. 

“That's all for tonight,” his father told Kevan, and the other man gave Jaime a weak smile. 

“Late night, nephew.”

“You too, uncle” Jaime said, suspicious. 

“Work never ends for the team principal, of course. I'm surprised to see a driver here, though.”

“That's because Lancel doesn't like to work. He could do with a few late nights himself.”

Kevan half-chuckled and half-grimaced. “I'll make the suggestion.” 

“How's Martyn?” Jaime asked coolly, and Kevan's whole face pinched. 

“Goodnight, Kevan,” Tywin said, his voice a sharp tug bringing Jaime and Kevan both to attention. 

“Goodnight, Tywin. Jaime.” Kevan hurried off to his car and Tywin stepped into the lamplight, watching Jaime carefully. 

“Shadowy night meetings suit you, Father.” 

Tywin's mouth thinned. “You're number one in the World Championship standings.” 

“Did that hurt you to say it out loud? I forget, where's your preferred driver? Is he even top ten?”

“We made a choice based on what was best for Lannister Corp.”

“You made a choice based on who you hated less. How is that working out for Lannister Corp?”

“You've done enough to keep us competitive,” Tywin said, though it looked like it hurt him to admit it. “Now if you'd just give Lancel some consideration-”

“No,” Jaime interrupted, furious. “You are not going to take the championship from me so you can win some meaningless Constructor title.” 

Tywin lifted one stern eyebrow. “Who provides the car that lets you win? Pays for your crew? The materials and engineers? You couldn't win without me, and that knowledge destroys you.” 

Jaime's breathing came hard and he wished for a moment Brienne was there. Not to step in, but so he could draw strength from the outraged support he would see in her eyes. “Without me you'd have only Lancel and not even be top five. It appears we need each other, no matter how much both of us hate it.” 

“There are other drivers,” Tywin said in a tone as dark as the night at his back. 

“There are other teams,” Jaime countered. They teetered on the edge of this conversation, Jaime keenly aware that the next words either of them said could have him adrift in the middle of the best season of his life. “But it's so much trouble to switch horses mid-stream,” he added through clenched teeth. 

Tywin's lips turned up in a bitter smile. “Luckily for both of us.” 

“I wouldn't call it luck.”

“I didn't say it was good luck.”

Jaime put his hands on his hips and stared up at the sky, looking for stars obscured by a thin wisp of clouds and too much city. “Will you be changing the team's strategy?” he asked the darkness. Even asking felt like too much vulnerability at the feet of his cold predator of a father. 

“Why change what's working?” Tywin said. 

_Because I'm your son_, Jaime wanted to say, the words beating loudly in his heart. If he'd known when he was seventeen that his father would still hate him almost twenty years later because of the choice he made, Jaime might never have joined Dragonfire in the first place. How different his life might have been if he'd just waited the extra year for Lannister Corp's second seat. He could have been World Champion many times over, getting ready to retire as a beloved and celebrated driver. 

Or perhaps he'd be dead instead of Aerys, killed in a fit of jealous rage by the King of F1. Would the fans have wept over him then? Would they have ostracized Aerys instead? 

Brienne would still be in her father's garage, listening to rock music and thinking her time with Red Connington's F2 team and people's old sedans were as good as it was ever going to get for her. All her skill, all her loyalty and hard work and passion for racing would have remained hidden on Tarth, doing no one but her father any good. 

“I won't sacrifice this season for you,” Jaime told his father. 

“Then you better hope Lancel doesn't put in too many late nights trying to catch up.” 

“If that's all it takes, I should be fine. Lancel only wants to work hard enough to be famous.” Jaime grinned, felt the mean slash of it twisting his face. The man he became whenever he was around his father was always the worst version of himself.

“Perhaps he should kill someone, too.” 

No matter what Jaime's worst version of himself was, though, it was never as bad as his father's. 

Jaime turned on his heel to escape to his car and Tywin snorted derisively at his non-response. “This is why you're not a winner, Jaime,” he called as Jaime unlocked his car a short distance away in the parking lot. “You're not willing to do whatever it takes.” Jaime slammed the car door shut on his father, but the words sat like heavy ballast in his body, weighing him down on the drive back home.

* * *

Jaime slapped a mosquito on his neck and tried to pay attention to what Peck was telling the drivers.

“I know most of you have done this before but we'll go through the plan just as a reminder. The Grid Kids have all been suited up in their special F1 karting suits and caps and they're waiting for you where you start driver's parade. Your Grid Kid will ride with you in the parade, then stand with you while we make the opening ceremony announcements, and then they'll be ushered back to your paddocks to watch the race with their families. All you have to do is just make sure they don't get lost from the moment we leave them with you to when they're reunited with their families.” Jaime could feel Peck's gaze on him and he ignored it, continuing instead to pick at the grease under his nails. 

“Does anyone have any questions?”

“Can we sign autographs for kids not our own?” Euron asked. “Last time I had one of Stark's want my signature.” 

“You can, but we try to keep drivers and kids one-on-one, so if your kid wants the signature of a different driver, you have to go with them.” 

“Why can't you just match fans to drivers?” Daario asked. “Seems short-sighted.” 

“Not as short-sighted as you think,” Peck said, his tone delicate. “We can't always find a fan for every driver, especially when we're far away from some cities.” 

“Yeah, how many Daario t-shirts have you ever seen up here?” Jaime said, smiling beatifically at Daario's angry glare. 

“Please don't get in a fight around the kids,” Peck said. 

“Tell that to Lannister,” Connington grumbled from somewhere behind and to his right side. 

“Sorry, I couldn't hear you,” Jaime said. “Is your face not fully healed yet?” Addam, on his immediate left, snorted. 

“_Please_,” Peck begged. 

“We'll behave,” Addam promised. “Is there anything else?”

“No, sir. Just remember the kids are all really excited to be here, please try to make the experience fun for them.” The drivers shuffled around and Peck said, “oh and thank you!” as they started to file out of the weigh-in room. Not every driver on the track had signed up, but Jaime noticed most of them were there, chatting easily. Addam settled into step with him and when Jaime looked over the other man smiled. 

“I don't think I've seen you do this before.”

“I haven't.” 

“It's fun. Although I had one boy last year who talked nonstop about wishing he'd been with Oberyn instead.” 

Jaime winced. “I expect whoever gets me will wish he hadn't.”

“Maybe in earlier seasons, but not this year. Who doesn't want to sit with the current World Championship leader?”

_Almost everyone_, Jaime though morosely, but he flashed Addam a falsely confident grin. 

They emerged into the sweltering heat radiating off of the track that had spent all day soaking up the sun. The tires would run extra loose in this weather; Jaime had already reminded Brienne – and been subsequently snapped at that she knew – to keep a close eye on the car's temperature for this race. At least Lannisport had some parts of the track that were covered, and other summer tracks were built with concrete instead of asphalt. The Winterfell Grand Prix was entirely open and laid bare to the burning sunshine; running it in summer was at least as much about temp management as anything else. 

“Gods I'm going to be dehydrated before we even start the race,” Addam muttered. 

“Don't pass out on your Grid Kid.”

“I'll do my best,” Addam said drily. “Look there they are.” 

There were a small crowd of around fifteen kids watching them looking excited and terrified in equal measure. There were enough of them, around eight to twelve years old, to match one kid per volunteering driver. Standing just off to the side was IAF president Petry Baelish, his usual smug and mysterious smile in place. Jaime hadn't seen Petyr since a blessedly brief interaction last season and though as usual the man's face stirred up every dark and painful reminder of what had happened with Aerys, it felt duller now, more a memory of the hurt than the hurt itself. 

The drivers assembled in front of the Grid Kids, and Petyr stepped in between the two groups. “Gentlemen, the IAF thanks you for participating in our Grid Kids program. This is our second year and it's already more successful, with new drivers participating all the time,” he inclined his head towards Jaime. “Children, you are welcome to introduce yourself to your driver now.” 

The kids stood there, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, when one pushed forward from the back. It was a girl of around ten, Jaime saw with surprise, with brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail and a very serious look on her young face. She marched directly up to him and held out her hand while everyone watched. 

“I'm Lyanna Mormont, and I was picked because I have the top Pro Skills score,” she said just as severe as her hairdo. 

There were some hastily muted snickers from around them and Jaime felt a surge of protectiveness as he took her hand and shook it like he would any other professional. 

“I'm Jaime Lannister and I drive for Lannister Corp Racing,” he said just as gravely as her. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Lyanna.” 

She nodded and then he saw her fingers tug nervously at the brim of the cap in her hand and he was reminded of Brienne, of the steady, dedicated race engineer and the uncertain woman always hiding underneath and Jaime knew Peck had assigned Lyanna to him on purpose. He glanced up, looking for Brienne, and caught her watching them from the gantry across the way. 

“Would you like to meet my race engineer?” he asked Lyanna and she nodded quickly, like she'd been waiting for him to ask. He smothered his smile and gestured for her to follow him, and the other Grid Kids poured forth to meet their drivers while he wound Lyanna through the crowd. 

As they neared Brienne waiting with a small, warm smile, Jaime felt the same swirls of hastily muted desire, hurt, and happiness that had accompanied every interaction since the party, and probably before if he were honest. In the past week he'd been the picture of perfect work friendship, but doing so had sapped him of nearly every last ounce of willpower with her always so close but never as close as he really wanted. Jaime clung to calling her Wrench like it was a lifeline. She'd joked at the party in High Hall about him not remembering her name but of course he knew her name, he heard it like a bell in his soul every hour on the hour. It was worse when she wasn't near, a constant tolling of where's Brienne? what's Brienne doing? when will I see Brienne again? Her name felt like grace on his tongue. 

Wrench was a chummy name. The name of his race engineer and friend and not the woman he had a hopeless crush on. 

“Wrench,” he said now, putting a gentle hand on Lyanna's shoulder. “This is my Grid Kid, Lyanna Mormont.” 

The girl's face had transformed into open worship and Jaime couldn't hide his pleased smile as he glanced at Brienne, who looked charmed and shy and happy all at once. 

“It's very nice to meet you,” Brienne said, her big hand swallowing the girl's as they shook. 

“I was really hoping to,” Lyanna whispered, all of her brash confidence with Jaime gone. 

“How long have you been karting?”

“Since I was four,” Lyanna said proudly. “I've been doing it professionally since I was eight.” 

“Just like Jaime.”

Lyanna glanced back at him and he wanted to laugh at how unimpressed she was. “I guess.”

Brienne pressed her long fingers to her lips and he knew she was smothering a laugh, too. “You know he's first in the World Championship this season.”

“I know.”

“I look forward to the day you can say you're first in the F1 championship.”

Lyanna's eyes widened and she nodded vigorously, her ponytail swinging. “That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be the first woman to win in Formula One.” 

“I sincerely believe that you will win,” Brienne said. “Although I hope you're not the first.” 

“Uh, Mr. Lannister? It's time for the driver's parade,” Peck said, pushing through the crowd to them. “Sorry to interrupt. Hi, Ms Tarth,” he said bashfully. Jaime's brows lifted and he tucked away a reminder to needle her a bit about Peck later on. 

“Shall we?” he asked Lyanna and he wondered for a second if she was going to just ask to stay with Brienne instead, which he wouldn't have blamed her for in the slightest. But she came with him to their car for the driver's parade, an old-model street-ready Direwolf Pack, their line of roomy convertibles. He climbed up onto the top of the back seat to sit and Lyanna sat next to him holding tight to the headrest. 

“You can grab my hand if you need to,” he whispered. 

“I won't.”

“Then do you mind if I grab yours if I'm scared?”

She looked skeptically at him but nodded. “If you must.” 

Jaime wondered if they could request specific kids when they did this again. Their car started rolling slowly and though her small fingers went white-knuckled on the seat leather, her jaw was firm as she stared out at the crowds cheering for them. Robb and Jon Snow's cars were in the lead as the local team, but he and Lancel were just after, befitting their team's status in the Constructor's rankings. Jaime waved briefly at the crowds and then glanced at Lyanna. 

“What's your favorite part of a race?” he asked her. 

“The third lap,” she said quickly. He tilted his head curiously at her. “I get nervous at lights out, and it takes me two laps to settle. The third lap always feels like the real start of the race to me.”

“Mine is the middle.”

“What's so great about the middle?”

“That's where the race is run. The beginning is all speed and adrenaline, trying not to crash right away and getting a feel for your car and the track that day. The end is all the stress of the finish, making sure you pay off everything that came before. But the middle is where you make your tire decisions, where your pit crew comes in, where it's just you, your car, and thirty or forty or fifty laps of racing. All the work we do between races? That's not for the beginning or the end, it's for the middle.” 

Lyanna considered him, her dark eyes thoughtful. “That makes sense,” she said sounding surprised. 

“It took me a long time to realize it. Maybe you can have the benefit of it much sooner in your career.” 

She smiled up at him, fierce and grateful, and he thought again of Brienne, of how she might have been like this little warrior as a child. He wished he had known that girl, too. 

They chatted idly through the rest of the parade, mostly him asking her questions about her karting career, while they waved at the applauding crowds all around the track and Jaime tried not to wish too hard that Brienne was with them, too, getting the accolades she deserved. 

When they pulled back into the pit lanes for the opening ceremony, Brienne was there, beaming at him with her thick lips and her wide, white teeth, and the urge to stride up to her and kiss her there in front of everyone – wagging tongues be damned – was so strong he had to look away. Surely the world knew by now that she unquestionably deserved to be where she was; whether he kissed her or not didn't mean all her skill disappeared. But he watched Lyanna head over to the crowd of other Grid Kids, all boys, and the way she stood near but slightly away from them while they all chatted with each other and ignored her, and his desire was swamped quickly by anger. 

Those careless children weren't ignoring Lyanna simply out of cruelty; they'd never been taught that a girl could be as good as them at racing, that what she had to say was worth anything. Jaime swallowed hard, knowing how frustrating it was to be the best and still be treated like you didn't belong. How much worse would it be when it was through no fault of your own except being born what they all saw as the wrong gender? 

He hurried to Lyanna's side and knelt down in front of her. “Lyanna,” he said too loudly, startling the boys near them into silence. “I've been thinking about how you said the third lap is the real start of the race. That was very smart and it's something Brienne and I will work into our race planning. It's clear you've earned that Top Skills position.” 

Her mouth opened, a small round 'o' of surprise, and he shook her hand again and stood, feeling a warm pleasure suffuse him as the nearest boys shifted closer to talk to her, one asking her what he'd meant, a second wondering if she had any other tips she could share. 

Brienne wandered over and bumped her shoulder against his, a friendly pressure that caused every nerve ending in his body to coalesce in the places they touched. 

“I'm glad she was your Grid Kid,” she said quietly, watching Lyanna opening up under the attention, talking with confidence and a quick-witted sarcasm. 

“I'm glad she got to meet you.”

Brienne flushed. “That's the only part of the job I'm still not used to.”

“Then you clearly need to meet more fans until you are.”

“Gods, no. I barely have time for the work as it is.” 

“Are you getting enough sleep?” he asked. 

“Enough, yes.” 

“And you're eating well?”

Brienne sighed. “Yes, Lannister. I'm exercising and taking care of myself. You're as bad as my father.” 

“I'm glad you have someone looking out for you.” Her smile was soft and warm in response and though he knew she was thinking of Selwyn, he pretended it was for him instead. 

“Ceremony's starting and I need to finish some last prep,” she said. She bumped his shoulder again. “You were great with her. Now go be great on the track.” 

“As long as I've got you with me,” he said lightly and she went red from forehead to neck, before turning away hurriedly. 

Chainsaw juggling, he thought wistfully as he watched her go, would have been easier.

* * *

A week later, on the off Sunday between Winterfell and Lannisport, Jaime was spending his birthday alone at the office.

He hadn't intended to be there, but he wasn't sure where else _to_ spend the day. His twin was having a staid soiree hosted by her husband that sounded like slow torture and he'd turned down Tyrion's invite to spend a rare weekend off going clubbing until they were both passed out or dead by the end of it. Bronn was home with Lollys, probably having enough sex to stock them up until August, and Jaime wasn't really close enough with the rest of the crew to consider spending time with them outside of work. 

The only other person he wanted to see was Brienne and though she'd sent him a 'happy birthday!' text that morning unprompted, he hadn't responded for fear it would end with him begging her to have dinner with him even though he knew she would just say no. So he'd poured himself an extra large drink for lunch, smoked what he swore was the only cigarette he would have as a thirty-six year old, and then aimlessly watched TV for a few hours before driving his motorcycle into the office. 

There had been a scattered handful of engineers there that afternoon, working away in preparation for the different requirements of Lannisport next week, but now that it was dinner time and there was no need to spend the whole day indoors, Jaime was fairly certain his was the only light still left on in the building. 

He raised his glass of water to his empty office. “Happy birthday to me,” he muttered, taking a sip. It wasn't even flavored water, which felt like such a maudlin statement on his life that he couldn't finish it. 

He probably should have texted Taena or Melara, but he didn't want to spend time with them. He didn't want to listen to his sister's barely concealed insults or his brother's indecent bragging. All Jaime wanted was to talk with Brienne, to find out what she did on her off days, what kind of birthday cake she liked, if she would ride through the hills of King's Landing with him on his bike. 

Jaime moaned and banged his head on his desk, then nearly shouted in alarm when his door opened. 

“Who-” but he knew in an instant who it was when her long shadow fell across his arm. “Brienne,” he breathed, half-believing she was just a dream in the dark. 

“Jaime,” she said, concerned. “What are you doing here?”

“Working?” he said, his voice going off-puttingly high at the end. 

“On your birthday?”

He shrugged. “It's just a day like any other.” 

Brienne's worried frown deepened. “Have you done anything for your birthday today?”

“I had a cigarette.” 

She shook her head, looking disappointed. “Anything that doesn't shorten your life by doing it?”

“I drank some water,” he grumbled. 

“Have you even eaten?”

“I feel like we've had this conversation before.”

She blinked, startled, and then a sheepish grin swarmed over her face. “I guess some things don't change. At least you didn't insult me this time.” 

“Progress,” he said, smiling, watching her features go soft and open in a way he'd probably dream about that night. Distance, his brain reminded him. He ignored it in favor of the much louder yelling in his heart. “Do you want to go to dinner with me?” Brienne's smile froze and then wobbled uncertainly. 

“I don't know,” she said quietly. “I mean I do, but.”

But. But the too loud gossip of others that wouldn't even let him drive her home from a party. 

“Then how about a ride on my motorcycle?”

“What?”

“It's getting dark outside and where I ride is usually deserted at this time of night, especially on a Sunday. No one will see us.” 

She chewed her thick bottom lip. “That makes it all sound very sordid. I don't mind spending time with you, I just-”

“You don't want to be seen with me, I know.”

“That doesn't make it sound better,” she said in a tone so dry it could catch fire. 

“Then come riding with me. Have you been on a motorcycle before?”

“No. My dad was firmly against it after Galladon died.”

“Well,” he said, standing slowly, “your dad's not here now, is he?”

Brienne's cheeks reddened and she looked down. “He's not.”

“I'm a pretty good driver,” he said, teasing, and he saw her shoulders shake once with a laugh. 

“That's what you keep telling me,” she said, and when she met his eyes he could see how much she wanted to say yes. “Do you think we'll both fit? I'm not exactly back of the motorcycle-sized.” 

Jaime arched an eyebrow. “My bike is plenty big.” 

Brienne snorted but the red in her cheeks spread out to her crooked her nose and down the freckled length of her long neck. “Sounds like you're compensating, Lannister.”

_I could show you_ he thought but he bit it back, as well as the image of pushing her against the door of his office and- _No. Bad._ he told both his errant thoughts and his twitching cock like they were misbehaving dogs. 

“I probably am,” he said out loud, taking a deep breath and picturing his father's disappointed face like an ice bath to cool his blood. “Come look at the bike and you can see for yourself.” He came around the desk and held out his hand and she stared down at it like it was a snake she was trying to decide was poisonous or not. 

Brienne gingerly wrapped her long fingers around his and glanced at him with a shy smile that was almost enough to override the mental images he frantically dreamed up of his father striding furiously around the halls of Lannister Corp, Kevan groveling at his side. 

_What are you doing?_ his brain demanded as he led Brienne through the empty corridors out to the front parking lot. 

_Enjoying my birthday for once._

His bike was parked in Tywin's CEO spot, where he always parked as a small, childish fuck you to his father. Brienne gasped as they walked up, pulling her hand away to brush the gleaming chrome. 

“You have an Iron Throne!”

“My pride and joy.” 

“It's beautiful,” she gushed, touching the deep leather seat, squatting to look at the engine. “My dad would flip out if he saw this. He's always wanted one.”

“I thought he was against motorcycles?”

“He's against me riding them. He still wants one.”

“Sounds hypocritical.” 

She frowned up at him and Jaime made a mental note to limit the negative comments about her father. “He doesn't have one, so he can't be hypocritical.”

“You're right,” he quickly agreed. 

“I guess it could fit us,” she said, standing again, her hands on her thick waist. He wondered briefly how it would feel to fit his hands there, the muscle and weight of her against his palms. Brienne's eyes narrowed and he worried for a second she'd heard his thoughts. “It's not safe to ride without a helmet though, and I don't have one. Do you have an extra?”

Jaime hadn't brought his today, either. “We could wear driving helmets.” 

“I don't have one of those and Lancel's won't fit me.” 

“Hold on,” Jaime said, filled with sudden inspiration. “I know just the thing. Wait here.” He rushed back inside to one of the many storage rooms and rifled through the miscellaneous items there before he found what he was looking for, then grabbed his own driving helmet on the way out with his free hand. When he hurried back outside he found Brienne bent over the bike, looking at the gauges and handles, the old jeans she was wearing pulled taut against her ass and he gripped the helmets tightly and stared instead at the big tires of his bike. 

When she saw the helmet he had she laughed, the sound bursting up into the sky like a flock of startled birds. 

“What in the seven hells is that?”

“It's a helmet,” he said, holding it out to her. The helmet was a bright neon green and covered with frogs forming the words MOAT CAILIN with their bodies. “I got it from one of our sponsors a few years ago and kept it thinking someday I'd wear it just to piss off my father.” 

“You're going to wear that one, right?”

“Part of the reason I never wore it is because it doesn't fit right, but it should work for you.” 

Brienne took the helmet and held it out away from her like it was a very stinky baby. “You're sure no one is going to see us?”

“Now who's vain?”

She smirked but took a breath and put the helmet on, her eyes peering out bright and amused. “Well?” she asked, her voice muffled. 

“You look like a radioactive lollipop,” he said cheerfully, pulling out his phone to take a photo. 

“No pictures!” she squealed, holding her hands up and trying to grab it out of his hands. Jaime laughed and danced away and she followed after, grabbing it with her long reach. She shut the phone all the way off and tossed it back to him and he had to scramble to catch it before it fell. 

“You're no fun,” he said. 

“You invited me,” she reminded him. She looked absurd in her hoodie and jeans and glowing helmet. Absurd and adorable. Jaime pulled his helmet on and got on the bike, shifting forward a little more than usual to give her plenty of room. 

“All aboard,” he said. 

“Isn't there some biker lingo you should use instead?”

“Hop on my hog, sexy mama?”

Brienne laughed even harder that time and shook her head. “You are so annoying,” she said fondly, climbing on behind him. He let himself scoot back a little once she was on until the front of her strong legs pressed against the back of his, her body a solid, warm wall a few inches away. She brought her hands up and he saw them hover at the edge of his vision, until they tentatively settled on his waist. A shiver of delight went through him. 

“Since you've never ridden before, the primary rule is that you have to lean into the curves with me. If you're balanced differently than I am it might bring the whole bike down. There are some easy turns on the way that will get you used to it before we get to the fun stuff. Ready?” Her helmet nodded in assent and he started the motorcycle, the engine roaring to life between their legs. 

Brienne's thighs and fingers tightened against him as he took off and Jaime focused twice as intently on the darkening road, the occasional car they zoomed by, the streetlights gleaming yellow as they flickered on. Once they hit the edge of the hills Brienne had settled into it with an ease he had expected from her, as naturally attuned to vehicles as she was. She was still holding herself back from him, though, sitting straight and as far away as she could fit in the limited space they had, but as the sky turned rose and purple he hit the low part of the hills and opened up the throttle. When they took the first of the winding curves she cinched tighter around and against him. Her arms fully encircled his waist, her body pressed so firmly against his back he imagined he could feel the weight of her small breasts through his own shirt. He had no jacket but he didn't need one; even if it hadn't been for the drowsy summer heat, Brienne's warmth against him stoked enough fire he could have burned all night. 

It was almost like sex, the way they moved together around the curves, the blood thrumming in his veins, her occasional breathless gasp. He had to shift a little on his seat to make room for his awkward erection, but he pressed the bike faster, the curves tighter, until she was welded against him and the wind whipped her joyful laughter from her mouth, leaving it like tracers behind them in the dark. 

They drove in and out of the sunset as they curved around the hill; here blinking against the last burnished red rays, there disappearing into the deep blue of the twilight. At every point Brienne touched him, Jaime's skin felt as tender and raw as a sunburn under his clothes; he was hyper-aware of her helmet vibrating a little against his, of her strong arms clutching his torso, of his ass pressed into the hot v of her legs. His hands were sweaty on the grips but there was no fucking way he would stop, not until they got to the smaller dirt road that took them the last way up to his favorite spot. 

As he slowed the bike to a standstill, Brienne's arms loosened and she pulled away, leaving him cold and aching for her touch again. Instead he turned off the motor and sat still, trying to figure out a way to get off of the bike when his cock was pressed so hard against his jeans he could barely move. 

“Everything okay?” she asked him, and he nodded, taking off his helmet. 

“Just taking a break.” 

Centuries ago there had been a keep at the top of Aegon's High Hill, but all that was left now were old stones weathered by time and the salt air off of Blackwater Bay. It was a popular destination for many, which was why Jaime had spent time looking for side routes and less-used places to rest, and he'd found this access road a couple of years ago that took him to the edge of the hill, just under where the keep had been, with a view of the bay and the lights across the Blackwater Rush below, and the endless parade of stars above. The air up here tasted of salt and grass and he saw Brienne inhale deeply when she dismounted the bike and took her helmet off. 

“It smells like Tarth,” she said, turning back to smile at him in the dim moonlight. The moon was half-full tonight, and the last pink rays of the sunset had died long ago, leaving them bathed in silver and black. 

“It's my favorite place to get away,” he admitted, dismounting on the other side of the bike from her, taking a hurried moment to tug at his jeans while he had his back turned. 

She wasn't looking at him, instead staring out into the distant horizon like she could see the rest of the world beyond. The wind played gently with her thin hair in the way he wanted to. “I can see why.” 

“Why were you at work today?” he asked, staring at her. 

Brienne pulled off her hoodie to reveal a tank top underneath, her muscular shoulders bunching as she did so in a way that made his mouth go dry. Her skin seemed to absorb the light, making it white and smooth as milkglass, her freckles mirroring the infinite stars. “Truthfully,” she said, “I wanted to spend some time alone with the car.” Even in the moonlight the reddening of her pale cheeks was clear. 

“August break isn't that far away, you'll have plenty of time then.”

She glanced at him, her brows furrowed. “I'm going home to Tarth over the break.”

Of course. She had no reason to stay in King's Landing when everyone was off. She'd want to go home to her father and whoever else was waiting for her there. Not a boyfriend, she'd said back in April, but perhaps someone she wished was her boyfriend. 

“We _are_ allowed to go home?” she asked, sounding worried. 

“August break is your time, you can do whatever you want.” 

“Good.” She tilted her head curiously at him. “What about you? Do you stay here?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I go to Myr or somewhere similar to take in the city without all the pressure of work to distract me. Lancel and I will spend the first week doing stupid promos they can release during the time off so the fans don't get too annoyed, but after that I'm free to do what I want, too.” 

Jaime walked to the edge of the flat gravel and stared across the Rush to roughly where he thought Tarth would be way down south in the Stormlands. It had been years since he'd been and he didn't remember it well, but he wished he could so he could picture Brienne there. She walked up next to him, stopping near without touching. 

“I see why you like the motorcycle so much. There's a freedom to it.” 

He swallowed, feeling more trapped than he'd ever been by his conflicting desire to be close to her and his need to push her away. Jaime would still kiss her here in the dark if he thought it wouldn't send her running, if it wouldn't ruin the friendship he treasured. “There is,” he said, his voice a rasp in the night. “We should get back, it'll be late by the time we're at the office again and I don't want you to miss dinner.” 

They put their helmets back on, and Brienne her hoodie, and she climbed on behind him again, her arms automatically curling around his waist this time instead of the distant grip of the start. He started the engine and leaned forward a little, and she leaned her head against his shoulder as they took the drive down more slowly. 

The trip down the hill was as solemn as the stars above and when he parked again in front of the Lannister Corp Racing offices Brienne took her helmet off and stared quietly at him when he remained seated, his visor pushed up. 

“It's your birthday but I feel like you gave me a present,” she said, crinkling her crooked nose with her awkward smile. 

“Still one of the best birthdays I've had.” 

Sadness gleamed like the stars in her big twilight eyes. Brienne put a hand on his shoulder and his whole body went rigid under her touch. Her fingers crept to the nape of his neck under his helmet, softly brushed through the short hair there before she dragged them away again as her pale skin reddened. “I'm sorry that we can't go out to dinner and do this right, but thank you for spending some of your birthday with me.” 

He wanted to tell her their ride was what he had wanted, that if he'd had a cake it would have been his wish before he'd blown out the candle, but that wasn't something drivers said to their race engineers, and Jaime was pretty sure friends wouldn't say it either, so he just nodded and started the bike up again. 

“You can get home okay?” he asked. 

“I'll take the bus, there's a stop just by the sports bar.” 

“Goodnight, Brienne.” 

She licked her lips and he thought for a moment there was something more she would say, that perhaps her body would lean towards him and he'd know for sure he wasn't alone in this, but she only hugged the bright green helmet to her chest, a shield between them. “Goodnight, Jaime.” 

The motorcycle roared as Jaime gave it more gas and he pulled away, though his thoughts stayed with her long after he'd left. 

He couldn't even quit smoking; how was he ever going to quit wanting Brienne?

* * *

They left a day early for Lannisport due to well over half the crew demanding to spend the extra time enjoying the city's particular delights. Brienne was mostly annoyed by the request, but Kevan didn't seem to even think twice at the team meeting on the Monday after Jaime's birthday; he'd just announced it with a sly smile and eaten up the raucous cheering like it had anything to do with him.

So Wednesday they boarded a bus and took the Goldroad straight across Westeros to Lannisport. Brienne sat next to Pod and they played his travel version of Boggle until she couldn't think of any more words and she drifted between sleeping and waking, her head against the window, her thoughts returning inexorably to the night of Jaime's birthday. 

He had been scarce since then, but that hadn't stopped Brienne from thinking about him, the way he'd felt so solid and strong in her arms, the tantalizing confidence with which he'd taken them through the hills, his green eyes glowing in the moonlight. Brienne had never wanted to kiss someone as badly as she had wanted to kiss Jaime on the top of Aegon's Hill, at least not until a short while later when his eyes had been so serious and sweet, the back of his neck a little sweaty from the helmet. It had been so tempting to let the darkness convince her that if she did kiss him, everything would still be the same. 

Instead she had shoved her desire back in its box where it belonged, though she'd had to admit to herself as she tossed endlessly in bed that night fighting the wanting she could not fully ignore, that she had unnecessarily snuggled against him on the way back. His driving had been much more sedate but his body had been such a wonderful weight against her chest, and her thighs had curved so perfectly against his hips, and he'd been relaxed in her arms like he didn't mind at all. When they turned onto the familiar street to the Lannister Corp offices, Brienne had internally cursed the night for not putting some sort of traffic in their way to slow down their return. 

It seemed the fates had saved the traffic for their drive to Lannisport, and as the bus crawled through the line of thousands of race fans all with the same destination in mind, Brienne could only stare out the window and be grateful that the August break would start soon. For a fleeting moment she'd thought Jaime had looked disappointed at her plans to leave, but that had to be fanciful nonsense. It would be good for them to spend time away from each other, to see her father and walk the familiar beaches of Tarth and not think about Jaime. 

She thought of him now, wondering how he would be arriving in Lannisport, if he would be partaking of the city's scandalous delights. Though the Lannisters were known for Casterly Rock, the port city that bore part of their name was considered their real spiritual home. The Golden City many called it, sprawling along the low hills and shores of the Sunset Sea. The three major roads of Westeros all ended here, and every racing fan in the country seemed to be traveling them now. As their red and gold bus crawled through the narrow streets, people hollered and cheered as they went by. 

“N-never been before?” Pod asked. 

“Never. I've only seen it on television.” She pressed her fingers to the window made warm by the sun. “It's intense.” 

“Just w-wait,” he said, grinning at her. 

They were dropped off with their luggage at the team's hotel, a tall, luxurious building right on the water's edge and when Brienne checked in she found her room overlooked the sea. The beach below was crowded with colorful umbrellas, towels, and people stretching in both directions. When she ventured down to the lobby to look around she was surrounded by beautiful men and women, many of them in skimpy bathing suits and expensive jewelry. She had packed her regular one piece as she always did on trips, though she hadn't been brave enough yet to actually chance swimming in case she ran into one of media or unfriendly crew. She would most assuredly not be testing the waters here, especially when her pale skin and masculine body would look more absurd than normal when surrounded by any number of women who could easily pass for swimwear models. 

Thankfully she had her work as a distraction, and she spent the evening on her balcony, her laptop balanced on her lap while she drank some of Lannisport's famous spiced honey wine and listened to the sounds of music and laughter from the partiers below, watched the lights bobbing on the water from yachts anchored off the shore. 

Thursday was the crew's day off, but Brienne took a cab down to the track and spent the day helping oversee the set-up of the mobile command center, the gantry, and, of course, the car. The engineers had been tinkering again and Brienne fussed over her a little, brushing off extra dirt, making sure everything was in order. She considered texting Jaime to see if he wanted to get in some extra discussion about the track, but decided it was better, and safer, to hold the distance as long as she could. They'd be back side-by-side tomorrow and she still hadn't fully recovered from the closeness of the motorcycle ride that she never should have agreed to but could never have resisted. Instead Brienne decided to walk back to her hotel through the busy, party-like streets of Lannisport. 

IAF had started here, and the Lannisport Grand Prix was considered by many the highlight of the season. There would be celebrities everywhere: actors, musicians, models, and more all wanting to get their photos taken at one of the premiere events in Westeros. There were parties every night, including the wildest Amber Lounge party of the season if the gossip sites Brienne had skimmed over the years were to be believed. In the middle of it now she could easily see that the barely contained carnival atmosphere of sweat and alcohol and fun during the day would transform into hot, wet nights of bodies pressed together and moving in time to too-loud music. 

Brienne imagined seeing Jaime at one of those parties, him walking in and giving her the same look he had when they were saying goodbye on his birthday. The hair on his neck had been so soft on her fingertips and hunger had flared in his eyes at her touch, rewarding her uncharacteristically bold gesture. Brienne had never had a man look at her that way and she didn't know what to do with it. Their work was a crucible, melting and reforging them together into a racing team, but that didn't explain why it had looked like he'd wanted to devour her. Brienne, with her too-large lips and her broken nose and her thick waist, had never been desired by anyone. But here in Lannisport surrounded by the smell of sunscreen and sex, the possibility that Jaime _did_ felt as real and unsteady as the cobblestones under her feet. Perhaps, in her imaginary club, he'd grab her hips with his strong hands and pull her against him and her arms would fit around his body like she already knew they could. She wondered how the rest of his hair would feel when her hands curled tightly into it. Heat pooled in her center and Brienne stopped at a farm stand to give all of her attention to a selection of spiny fruits until her breathing evened out and her face felt less flushed.

At least people would think it was just the sunshine that had her sweating. 

What Tyrion had told her a month ago at Tywin's party was not any less true now than it had been then, but it certainly felt less true here in the middle of so many people who didn't seem to care at all what anyone thought of them. Brienne wished she could be the same, if only just for a day. But even if she did, she would go back to being herself tomorrow: a giant, ugly woman trying to make her place in a sport that didn't want her, with a man who would surely wake up and regret whatever had happened. 

All she could allow herself were brief fantasies and even those were probably dangerous to indulge too deeply. Brienne hurried back to the hotel, her head down as she passed groups of people clinking champagne glasses at sidewalk cafes, children running wild around their tired parents, and couples walking hand-in-hand and occasionally kissing passionately in the sun. Nothing felt quite real, not even the cold air of the hotel lobby as she pushed through the revolving doors. 

“Brienne!” She looked up and saw Podrick waving at her from the hotel bar. He was sitting with Bronn and Willem and she changed direction to join them. 

“Enjoying your day off?” Bronn asked as she walked up. 

“It's certainly different.” 

Willem smiled and gestured for her to take the seat next to him. Ever since Martyn's departure he'd been extra solicitous towards her, as though he was trying to prove he was the exact opposite of his twin. Brienne still didn't entirely trust him, but she was working on it, and she sat down with a small smile. 

“D-d-did you go t-to any parties last n-night?”

“No, I had some work to get done.” She took in Pod's bloodshot eyes and the dark circles underneath them and grinned. “I take it you did though.”

He beamed at her and Bronn snorted. “He thinks he's in love.” 

“Do tell,” Brienne said, leaning forward. 

“I m-met her at the p-p-party last night. W-we danced f-for hours,” he said on a dreamy sigh. “She's b-beautiful and funny and sh-she didn't care about m-m-my stutter.”

“What's her name?”

Pod's smile disappeared and he looked despondent all of a sudden. “I d-don't remember.” 

Bronn snickered into his drink, something fruity-looking with a small umbrella. “What do I always tell you, Poddy? Drink just enough you forget the shitty parts but not so much you forget the fun you were having.” 

Pod shrugged, looking sheepish. “The h-honey wine w-w-was stronger than I-I-I thought.”

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

“Curling brown hair of the softest sheen, brown eyes as gentle as a doe's,” Bronn droned in the tone of one who had not stopped hearing about all the girl's qualities. “Tits that fit in your hands.”

“Bronn!” Pod snapped, scandalized and blushing. “D-don't talk about her like th-th-that.” 

“Am I missing gossip about young Podrick's love life?” Jaime suddenly asked from behind her, and Brienne stiffened in her chair. He touched her shoulder gently, long fingers curving over the sweaty fabric on her skin, before moving to sit in the last remaining free seat across the table. He was wearing a white linen shirt and brown, knee-length shorts and he looked tanned and rested and remarkable and Brienne stared intently at her hands on the table to keep from staring at him. 

“Pod's in love and he doesn't know her name,” Willem said, filling Jaime in.

“He knows what her tits feel like, though,” Bronn supplied cheerfully and Brienne worried for a second Pod was going to launch himself across the table at Bronn. 

“Gods, Bronn, you're too old to be this coarse,” Jaime grumbled. 

“You're never too old for that. Besides, he told me about it this morning.”

“I-I didn't mean f-f-for you t-to share it!” Pod looked significantly at Brienne and she heard the silent “with her” that it implied. 

“Why would Chief care? She's got tits, too,” Bronn said. Brienne covered her face and laughed in embarrassment. 

“Bronn,” Jaime said sharply, his tone rough and serious. When Brienne peeked at him between her fingers he was angled towards Bronn, glaring. 

“I'm not trying to be offensive! I'm just pointing out a fact! It'd be like saying you have a cock.”

The words 'Jaime's cock' settled into her brain and would not be dislodged. When Jaime looked at her to gauge her reaction it only made the whole thing worse, her thighs tightening in instinctive response. He wouldn't stop looking at her, eyes as hot as the sun outside. 

“I have more work to do,” she said abruptly, standing so fast her chair screeched loudly across the tile floor. 

“Look, I didn't mean-” Bronn started, but Brienne shook her head. 

“No, it's fine. I really should get back to my room.” She licked her dry lips and tried not to look at Jaime, worried he would take it as an invitation that she desperately wanted to but couldn't give. “See you all later?” 

All the men around the table nodded, except for Jaime, who was watching her with a narrow, intense gaze. Brienne felt like she was escaping a predator's trap when she left, her heart racing all the way up to the sanctuary of her room. She ordered room service for dinner, stared unseeing at the ocean until the sun had disappeared behind the far horizon of the Sunset Sea. Unasked for she thought of Jaime finding her here in the dark, of what he would look like sprawled on the sheets of her bed, the moonlight in those dangerous eyes. Brienne slipped her hand under the elastic of her sensible cotton underwear to touch herself and her finger slid into eager dampness. _Don't do this_, she warned her aching body, but she felt too reckless and needy to heed her own advice. She came quickly, imagining her fingers were his, and she eventually fell asleep relieved and disappointed in equal measure that Jaime had not followed her.

* * *

Jaime was disappointed. He was certain there had been a mirror of his desire in Brienne's beautiful eyes right before she'd fled the table and Bronn's obnoxious commentary about Pod's crush. Mostly certain. Fifty percent for sure. But he knew her reputation still meant everything to her, and if he followed her up to her room in this hotel crowded with fans and cameras, it could have put all of that in danger, so he sat there slightly hunched over until his erection died down and he listened to Podrick getting angrier and angrier at Bronn's crude language until the younger man had fled with as much speed and constrained emotion as Brienne.

“What's got your panties in a twist?” Jaime asked Bronn after Willem awkwardly excused himself a minute later. 

“Lollys wants me to quit after this season.” 

“She's ready for you to become a house husband? I didn't see that coming.” 

Bronn glared at him. “No, she wants me to work, just not doing this. Takes me away too much, she says. Thinks I should become a regular mechanic.” He scoffed. “Me, working eight hours a day on some old woman's station wagon after all I've done?” 

“Brienne likes it.”

“Here we go.”

“What?”

“Brienne. You never shut up about her now, do you?” 

“That's not true,” Jaime protested, drawing his finger through the wet residue left by his drink. “Besides you're the one who wanted me to make her my race engineer.”

“For which you never thanked me.”

Jaime rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Bronn, for being a giant pain in my ass all the time.”

“You're welcome,” he said primly. “Since you're thanking me for that very thing-”

“Whatever you're about to say, just stop.” 

Bronn drank down the last of his beer and they sat in blessed silence for long enough Jaime thought he was going to listen for once, until Bronn broke the peace by saying, “you can't fuck her.” 

Jaime's hand curled tight around his own empty glass. “I know that,” he muttered. 

“Your eyes said otherwise earlier. You better tone that shit down.” 

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” Bronn looked at his empty glass and sighed, then stood up and stretched. “Either find some other woman to get your rocks off with or become more familiar with your hand, but do something that doesn't make you look like you're going to die if you don't stick your cock in her.”

“Gods, why do you have to put everything in the worst possible way?”

“I'm a truth-teller, Lannister, I don't have time for tact,” Bronn said airily. “But you know I'm right. She can't afford all the shit you'll put her through.” 

“I wouldn't hurt her,” Jaime said fiercely, even the idea of it swirling bile in his throat. 

“Not on purpose.” 

Jaime leaned back in his chair and massaged his forehead where a dull ache steadily grew. “Fuck,” was all he said, knowing Bronn was right and hating him for it. The other man quietly bid him goodnight and Jaime stayed in the hotel bar for another hour growing broodier by the minute. He thought of Brienne arguing with him, of her endless legs that would easily wrap around his waist, of the serious furrow of her brow as she helped guide him to victory, until he found himself in his hotel shower that evening coming hard in his own hand, with Brienne's name on his tongue, imagining it was her strong fingers gripping him tight.

* * *

“We had an agreement,” Theodan hissed at Brienne three days later. It was the middle of the Lannisport Grand Prix and they were side-by-side in the gantry, watching their drivers fight for the 1-2 positions.

“I don't recall exactly what was discussed,” Brienne murmured, trying to put him off, willing Jaime to move just far enough ahead of Lancel that it wouldn't matter in a minute anyway. But of course their cars were mirrors of each other and it was a constant battle to get and hold a lead. 

“We gave up our pole position for you!”

“No, you gave Jaime a slipstream, he just made the most of it.” 

Jaime pulled ahead on the next corner when Lancel briefly locked his tires and Brienne gave Theodan a knowing look. 

“He needs to pit first so Lancel can pull ahead,” Theodan complained. Brienne pretended she didn't hear him and he grabbed her arm. “Are you listening to me?”

“Get your hand off of me,” she said in a low, threatening tone, and Theodan quickly released her. “Focus on running your driver's race and I'll focus on mine. It's too early for Jaime to change tires if he's going to take this.”

Tywin's voice cut in, a sharp demand to Jaime: “let him by.” 

“Tell him to close up,” Jaime snapped. 

“Let Lancel pass,” Tywin said in the tone of a man who never repeated an order. 

“Stark is too close, we'll do it later,” Brienne interrupted. Her voice felt confident but her hands were shaking on the keyboard in front of her. “Focus on your race, Jaime.”

“Roger that,” Jaime said and when Brienne turned to look behind her into the Lannister Corp garage, she saw Tywin glaring at her from within. Even from this distance his eyes were as sharp as the Valyrian steel swords of myth. 

“They're not doing it,” Theodan relayed to Lancel from next to her. “Box this lap and we'll try on fresh tires.” 

Thirty minutes later, Jaime zipped under the checkered flag in position one and whooped loudly over the microphone. “Fucking fantastic!” he shouted, making her wince. “Well done, beautiful girl.” 

Brienne's heart stuttered. “What?” she gasped into the mic. 

Jaime was quiet for a long second before saying, “that's what I call my car.”

She pressed her hands to her pink cheeks and nodded. “I'm sure she appreciates it.” 

“We took first didn't we?”

“Well-earned, by both of you.” 

“All three of us,” Jaime said, and Brienne bit down hard on her lip to keep from smiling too wide. “I haven't forgotten our wager, either.” 

“Warrior's balls,” she muttered and Jaime laughed gaily in her ear. It had been impossible to forget; the crew of course had heard all about it, but because their radio communications were also publicly broadcast the IAF had been playing it up all weekend as marketing. Brienne imagined Petyr Baelish salivating now that Jaime had actually won, and wondered how many ill-advised photos her dad was going to send her of herself getting pushed into the pool.

She looked down at her clothes and sighed. She'd stopped wearing jumpsuits on race day months ago, when the heat made it unreasonable and she had no need to as race engineer. Today she was in a Lannister red polo shirt and tan men's slacks. At least they wouldn't turn see-through when wet. 

“I'll see you when you park,” she grumbled, taking off her headset while Jaime was still chuckling. 

Brienne crossed the pit lane and saw Tywin watching her with with a cool anger that suggested his response would be delivered only after he'd given it careful calculation. Her stomach tightened but she forced herself to smile at him as she strode by. 

Jaime was already climbing out of the car by the time she got to the section of track that they'd set aside to act as the parc fermé and she watched from the back of the crowd as the crew celebrated the win with him. P1 at the Lannisport Grand Prix was like a mini World Championship; many men had won only this race in a year and still felt like they'd had a good season. Arthur Dayne had once said that a win here felt like two anywhere else. It was thrilling to see Jaime enjoying it, the way the happiness poured from him like sunlight, warming all who felt it. After pulling away from Bronn, she saw him scanning the crowd and he found her easily; there was a promise in his eyes that made her shiver, made her think of her own hotel room fantasy days before. _The bet_, she thought. _He's thinking of the bet._

After the podium ceremony the team gathered together along the edge of the swimming pool for group photos. The pool was a feature unique to Lannisport, a throwback to the days when women weren't even allowed on the track, just as pretty ornaments beside it, but Brienne loved the traditional celebration here, the way it reminded her of kids in summer being reckless and carefree. Today she would be one of those grown-up kids, and she stuffed down the goofy smile she could feel forming. There were always so many photos before and after a race, but these where they gathered to celebrate the win as a team were the only ones Brienne ever liked. Jaime posed in the front middle with the rest of them fanning out behind him, and she liked standing at the back where she could tuck herself away and still feel like she was a part of everything. 

But this time as the photographers waited for the crew to arrange themselves, Jaime grabbed her forearm and gently but firmly dragged her forward to stand with him at the front. 

“I won't renege on the bet, but can't I at least do the photos from the back?” she asked hopefully. 

“No, the world should see you.”

“I don't want the world to see me,” she said, glancing around nervously. 

Jaime stilled even as crewmen bumped into them while they jostled for their favorite spots. She waited for him to deliver platitudes about beauty being on the inside or to even ask why she would care, the way someone as naturally gorgeous as he was would never understand what it was like. Instead he just smiled a little. “It's their loss,” he said, letting her go. 

Startled, she pushed to the back of the crew, but for the first time she felt a twinge of regret for not being up there next to him, beaming at the cameras and believing that who she was, not what she looked like, might actually be enough. 

Jaime fidgeted after the first round of photos and he swiveled his head to find her, grinning maniacally when he did. 

“Wrench!” he yelled, and the assembled media chuckled. “I believe I won a bet.” 

Excited whoops ran through the crowd when Jaime stood suddenly, and the clicking of cameras turned frantic when the bodies between them parted like he'd waved a magic wand. “Time to deal with you,” he said in a low voice and Brienne flushed hot all over. He tugged on her fingers, a quick pull that got her moving towards the edge of the pool, and then he leaned forward, turning his head slightly to whisper in her ear. 

“You can swim, right?” he asked.

“Better than you,” she replied and when he pulled back to grin at her, his teeth white against his golden skin, his eyes dancing, she put her hands up on his chest and shoved him backwards into the water first. 

The crowd went silent for a second until Jaime broke the surface and shook his head like a dog, running his hands over his wet hair. “Now you're in for it,” he promised, climbing like lightning out of the pool, faster than seemed entirely fair, and the shouting and cheers became cacophonous when he lifted her up, swinging her legs up into his other arm like a groom carrying his bride, and jumped back into the pool with her. 

The water hit with a cold slap against her back and she flailed in his arms, but he set her feet down and she realized she was standing only chest deep. Jaime wiped the water from his face and he winked at her. 

“A Lannister always pays his bets,” he said. 

She laughed. “I'm not a Lannister, I only work for one.”

“Close enough.” 

They smiled at each other and then gasped simultaneously when Podrick came crashing in-between them, arms waving wildly. Brienne blinked away the water and saw Bronn grinning sharply down at them just before Willem shoved him in, too. 

After that it was chaos, bodies falling into a pool not big enough for all of them, cameras going, spectators laughing and cheering them on. Brienne stood in the middle of it, her heart radiating contentedly inside of her, until she saw Tywin standing at the edge of the pool, his arms folded over his chest. No smile dared cross his severe features; no person in the world would dare push him into the pool. 

“Come to take a dip with us, father?” Jaime shouted from across the pool. He'd gotten moved back there when it became too crowded with the others. 

Tywin sneered and turned away, and when she looked back at Jaime he looked hurt, the little boy he had been still desperate for his unyielding father's approval. Brienne tried to shove through the crowd to get to his side, but he pulled himself up out of the pool and was gone before she could manage, leaving only his wet footprints drying in the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole the Arthur Dayne quote about Lannisport from Triple Formula One champion Nelson Piquet, who said that at Monaco (which Lannisport is HEAVILY based on) "a win here was worth two anywhere else." I also copied the Lancel/Jaime position battle from what happened between Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel & Charles Leclerc this season.


	11. August (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first week of break passed quickly enough as Jaime threw himself into cleaning up his email inbox, his apartment, and his office desk in-between the various activities they filmed him and Lancel doing: rollerblading on a beach sidewalk, miniature golf (which he'd wanted to text Brienne about when he'd kicked Lancel's ass, but she'd only been gone a couple of days and it felt too needy), and a particularly mistake-filled afternoon grilling over an open flame that eventually had to be put out with fire extinguishers. Jaime had prodded the charcoal that had once been his steak and sighed, wishing Brienne was there to tease him about it. 
> 
> The first day after they were done with their commitments for the team, with his time stretching free and unburdened by demands, Jaime woke up without an alarm, stretched in his bed, and then laid there for an hour with no fucking idea what to do until the urge to pee got too strong to ignore any longer. He listlessly scrambled himself a few eggs for breakfast, flipped through channels on his tv, started reading his own copy of the Arthur Dayne book, and just generally floated lost through his own life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I'd post on Sundays but I might change the day to Friday for awhile. I'm too busy Monday through Thursday to think about it, but as soon as Friday hits I become unbelievably impatient. So as long as I have chapters backed up and weekends to work on future chapters, I'll post on Fridays. :) Thanks go to Brynn again who has been really helpful with some thorny future stuff I've been working on, as well as this chapter as with every chapter. She is the best! And thank you all for your wonderful comments and enthusiasm! And now: August break.

The last race before break was a somber end to the first half of the season when Theon Greyjoy crashed so severely in Pyke that they had to end the race even though it was only halfway done. The drivers all returned to the parc fermé and they and the crowd were muted as everyone watched the flatbed truck hauling away the twisted body of Theon's car, the distant wailing of the ambulance having already faded. 

There was no podium ceremony for the top three, just a quick presentation of trophies and each man with a look on his face that said they were grateful it wasn't him that day. When Jaime trudged down the stairs holding the phallic-looking first place trophy, not even Bronn made a lewd comment. Brienne searched Jaime's serious face as the crew clapped him on the back, but he only stared at the trophy. 

They had to fly home from Pyke, so Lannister Corp held their last team meeting before the break on Tuesday morning, where Kevan informed everyone that Theon had suffered a concussion but he was awake and otherwise seemed he would recover well. A ripple of relief filtered through the room and Jaime visibly slumped next to her. Kevan finished with the usual platitudes about the season and then dismissed them, saying he'd see them in three weeks when they'd start preparing for White Harbor. 

Though everyone else hollered and cheered, hugging and patting each other on the back, Brienne frowned as Jaime excused himself to go hole up in his office. She'd watched the tape herself the night before; Theon had made a bad call and slammed into a wall, and then Euron had come around the corner and tried to avoid him but smashed his rear end, sending Theon's already-damaged car in a spiral. Euron had been fine and though his nephew had not been so lucky, with the positive news she didn't understand why Jaime still seemed so off. He hadn't been anywhere near them on the track, so it couldn't have been guilt. 

She started to cautiously follow him when Pod and Bronn intercepted her. 

“Leaving already?” Bronn asked.

“No, just going to pack up my work things.”

“Well I'm off and I'm giving Podrick here a ride; we can wait if you need one.”

“No thanks. Sandor's waiting outside and he's got my luggage, I'm heading straight for the ferry.” 

Bronn shrugged and Podrick stepped forward, hugging her. “H-h-have a good b-break,” he said. She hugged him back hard, realizing she'd miss his sweet face and cheerful smiles. This must have been what it felt like to leave school for the summer when you actually had friends. 

“It's just a few weeks,” Bronn grumbled, but he gave her the world's most awkward one-armed side hug and looked mollified when he stepped away. “Enjoy your time to yourself, and don't turn on your laptop, will you?”

“I can't make any promises, but I'll do my best.” 

Bronn grunted. “Never thought I'd meet someone more stupidly dedicated than Lannister. We'll be seeing you.” 

Brienne wished the pair well and then escaped from the room to go find Jaime. 

She hesitated at the window to his office and peeked inside. He was sitting in the dark, leaning back in his chair with his hands lightly resting on his knees. She would have thought he was meditating if it weren't for the slight frown creasing his face. Brienne knocked once on the window and he jolted, his eyes flicking up quickly. Jaime nodded when he saw it was her and she entered the office, shutting the door and the noisy goodbyes outside. 

“Good news about Theon,” she said. 

“Very.” 

“Are you...” Brienne tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. “Is everything all right?”

Jaime's fingers tightened on his knees. “I don't like crashes,” he said quietly, and then huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “That sounds stupid, of course I wouldn't. No one does. But the bad ones still make me think of Aerys.” 

Brienne nodded and took the empty chair across his desk, a chair she had spent countless hours in since January. It felt comfortable and right to be here with him now in that chair, even as everyone outside the office packed up their things and hurried to their homes and loved ones.

“I've never watched it,” Jaime said, his gaze on but not seeing her. 

“Aerys' crash?”

He nodded. “I tried once, about six years ago, but I couldn't do it.”

“That's not surprising – I still try to avoid the road Gal died on. It must be very traumatic for you.”

“For me?” His eyes sharpened and she felt his self-hatred like a physical wall between them. “I'm alive still. The least I could do is watch what happened.”

“Do you want to?” 

“Yes. And no.” 

“I can watch it with you, if you want,” she offered softly.

Jaime's face hardened into a look she hadn't seen from him since before Martyn had left, but it disappeared just as quickly, melting into a gentleness she wasn't sure she had ever seen. “Thank you. I can't right now but...maybe later.” 

“Just tell me, Jaime. I'll be here when you're ready.” 

He breathed in slow and deep and leaned towards her, sliding his hands over the top of the desk and she had the sudden urge to reach out and cover them, but she folded hers tightly together in her lap instead. “You're leaving soon, I suppose?” he asked in a rough voice. 

“Right after this,” she confirmed. “I tried to tell my dad I wouldn't get in on the last ferry until past midnight but he didn't care, he said he'd rather have me home.” 

Jaime's smile was small but genuine. “He seems like a good man.” 

“He is. I know he's not a perfect father but...he's perfect for me.” 

“That's all any of us can hope to be to the ones we love.” He dragged his hands back into his lap and smiled crookedly at her. “You should get going, then. Don't want to keep the Hound waiting too long, it's not worth the extra sass. Make sure you use your free time to read your book.” 

“I was planning on it.” 

“And enjoy your time away from me,” he smirked. 

Brienne laughed a little at the unexpected jolt of humor. “I'll try not to get too used to the quiet.” 

They smiled and stood together. Jaime came around the desk and her heartbeat sped up, a hummingbird's wings in her chest. 

“It feels weird to just shake your hand,” he explained as he held his arms out a little from his body, a question in his eyes. They had never hugged outside of the track and the elation of a race's end, though she'd wondered about it often enough. She licked her lips and stepped into his embrace, intending for it to be quick, or at least no longer than the hug she had shared with Podrick, but without the distraction of the cheering crowds, the feeling of being where she belonged flooded her even more intensely when his arms curved around her back and she held him tightly in return. She closed her eyes for a long second and imagined she could feel their hearts beating in time. As handsome and charming and talented as Jaime was, this was what she had yearned for when she was imagining just this those weeks ago: his quiet strength supporting her, his steadiness even with the size of her in his arms. She didn't feel too big or too ugly or too anything with Jaime; she just felt like herself. 

Brienne swallowed hard and forced her arms to unlock, her body to take a step away from what all of her desired. Jaime was breathing harder and she thought for a wild moment he would pull her back against him, couldn't decide if she wanted him to or not. She glanced out his window and saw there were still crew out there packing up and saying goodbye and when she looked back at Jaime whatever she had thought had been in his face was gone, replaced with a tight smile. 

“If you get tired of King's Landing you can always come to Tarth,” she blurted impulsively, and then immediately wanted to sink into the floor. _Distance!_ her rational brain reminded her. Her heart gave her head the finger. 

Jaime smiled, a surprised but pleased twist of his lips. “I'll keep that in mind. Goodbye, Brienne.” 

“Goodbye, Jaime.” She left his office, packed up her things, and bid a few of the remaining engineers goodbye, forcing herself not to look back at Jaime, to see if the prickling of her skin was memory or him watching her go. 

Brienne's heart didn't slow down again until she was standing on the deck of the ferry, heading for home.

* * *

The first week of break passed quickly enough as Jaime threw himself into cleaning up his email inbox, his apartment, and his office desk in-between the various activities they filmed him and Lancel doing: rollerblading on a beach sidewalk, miniature golf (which he'd wanted to text Brienne about when he'd kicked Lancel's ass, but she'd only been gone a couple of days and it felt too needy), and a particularly mistake-filled afternoon grilling over an open flame that eventually had to be put out with fire extinguishers. Jaime had prodded the charcoal that had once been his steak and sighed, wishing Brienne was there to tease him about it. 

The first day after they were done with their commitments for the team, with his time stretching free and unburdened by demands, Jaime woke up without an alarm, stretched in his bed, and then laid there for an hour with no fucking idea what to do until the urge to pee got too strong to ignore any longer. He listlessly scrambled himself a few eggs for breakfast, flipped through channels on his tv, started reading his own copy of the Arthur Dayne book, and just generally floated lost through his own life. 

Summer breaks were not usually like this for him. Last year, barely even in the top ten of the world championship ratings, Jaime had spent one of his weeks hiding in Braavos and the other training intensely for the second half of the season, an exercise that turned out to be for naught. In his second season back at F1, he'd spent most of the two weeks drunk with Tyrion and coming up with nicknames for their father that could never be repeated. But drunk or sober, he had had plans. There was nothing stopping him from making plans now, except the one thing he wanted to do was the one thing he wasn't sure he should. 

'Find some other woman,' Bronn had said back at Lannisport, like Jaime had ever been one to scoop up the nearest willing warm body. 

Even he and Melara and he and Taena had had to come to clear arrangements, agreeing that nothing serious would come of their handful of nights together beyond the expectation of a good time, before he'd felt settled enough to enthusiastically enjoy them. It wasn't the relationship he'd always imagined, but it shored up at least some of the small holes in his angry heart knowing someone was just a text message away when the pressure got to be too much and he didn't want to waste another night in a glass. 

At least until Brienne stomped into his life. 

_Fucking Brienne_, he thought, angry at her for being her, angry at himself for being mad at her for it. She drove him crazy without even trying; he'd thought of nothing for a week after the Lannisport pool but her body in his arms, and he'd been the idiot to pick her up when he could have just pushed her in. 

The worst part, the part that made his stomach feel like a particularly acidic rave, was he was certain she wanted him, too; if not as much as he wanted her, then at least enough it was getting under her skin. It had been impossible to miss in the goodbye hug they'd had, when she'd clung to him with a vulnerability and desire that had left him reeling. Three weeks they'd be apart, and yet they had both acted like it would be a year or more. It was inane. Idiotic. A testament to how badly they both needed to get laid. 

Jaime had always felt more connected to Melara so he called her first, hoping and dreading in equal measure that she'd answer. 

After three rings, she did. “What's wrong?” she said. 

He frowned. “Why would you think something's wrong?”

“You're calling me. You don't call, you text.”

“I'm calling now.”

“Jaime.” He could picture the impatient twist of her mouth. She had less time for his foibles than even Bronn. She was, he thought, almost a friend, and he knew he couldn't have sex with her when all he would think about was Brienne. 

“I don't think I can see you again.”

“Ohhhhh there's a woman,” she said, sounding amused. 

“Yes. Well. No. Not yet.”

“Not yet? Why on earth not? Is she in jail?”

“It's complicated.” 

“So she is in jail.” 

“She's not in jail,” he grumbled. “It's just not a good time.”

“Jaime you're in one of the most dangerous sports in the world and you haven't had a girlfriend, well, ever as far as I know. When _is_ a good time?”

He plucked at the knee of his jeans. “It's not right for her.”

“Did she say that or did you decide it for her?”

“She said it.” She had, hadn't she? He thought back to the party; she'd said she liked him but they couldn't be seen together because the rumors of something that wasn't true. But what if they made it true? Would that make the attacks about her job easier to turn away? Would she even be willing to take the chance? It wasn't like she'd turned him down – he'd never even had a chance to ask. A small tremor started in his belly. 

“Did she say when the right time would be?”

He had to tread carefully here; with even a few hints it would be easy for her to assume it was Brienne. “Not exactly. But more when the racing season was done.”

“So you're just going to wait around alone? If you're not together, it wouldn't be cheating if we had sex,” Melara said, oblivious to the sudden foundational rearrangement going on in Jaime's world. 

“It would to me.”

“Such a romantic. What's your plan, then?”

“My plan?”

“In my experience, romantics don't sit around waiting for their love lives to just work out, much to their detriment.” 

A plan? He'd only just realized there was room for a plan two minutes ago, though he couldn't tell her that. “She did invite me to visit her over the break.” 

“She wants you to wait but she also invited you to see her? One of those isn't true.” 

“Which one do you think it is?” he asked, dreading the answer. 

“How should I know? I don't even know who this woman is.” Jaime sighed and he heard Melara make a small humming noise over the phone. “I give you permission,” she said. 

“What?”

“Isn't that really why you called? You wanted someone to tell you it was all right to go. I'm telling you: it's fine. You were never tied to me, or me to you. Go get her.” 

He straightened in his chair, heart racing. “What if the invite wasn't real?”

“Then you come back and I'll make you forget her.” 

Melara was great in bed, but he doubted even she could make him forget Brienne. “You know it's not you-”

“Don't patronize me, Jaime,” she cut him off, sounding annoyed. “It is me, and it's you, and it's her. I hope it works out for you, but if doesn't, call me and we'll see where we are. Are you going to tell Taena?”

Jaime snorted. “I'm sure she already knows. It's been months.” 

“You should send me her number,” Melara said thoughtfully. “She might be lonely.” 

For a second the plans that were forming themselves in Jaime's mind skidded to a halt as he considered Melara and Taena together, his cock stirring a little. “Why didn't you ever tell me that was an option?”

Melara laughed dryly. “Good to know you do still have some typical male qualities. Eases the sting of losing you.”

He snorted. “Thanks, Melara.” 

“Thank you. You didn't love me, but you were always kind.” 

“Did you?” he asked tentatively. 

“Did I what?” she asked. 

“Love me?”

“So full of yourself.” He could hear her fond smile. “Goodbye, Jaime,” she said, gentle but firm. 

“Take care.” 

She hung up without responding. Jaime sighed and texted her Taena's information and 'she likes her feet massaged' and grinned when she sent back two women emojis with a taco between them. They'd both be just fine without him, he knew; shit, they'd likely be better off. That left just him and Brienne to worry about. 

Bronn had warned him away from Brienne because he thought Jaime would hurt her, that he didn't understand her gentle heart. Jaime had two weeks to prove to all of them that he did. He opened up a new browser on his phone and started looking for somewhere to stay on the beautiful island of Tarth.

* * *

When Brienne stepped off the ferry, the sight of her dad, tall and broad and home, overwhelmed the space in the mostly empty waiting area. He waved his big hand and she rushed over, was swooped up and spun around in his arms. After she regained her feet she smiled up at him and all the lines in his face went deep as he smiled wide back at her. 

“Welcome home, girl,” Selwyn said, kissing her hard on the forehead. He easily hefted her single piece of luggage and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders. “Truck's this way.” 

They chatted about work the short ride back to his house, where she'd been living in her own separate space in the backyard ever since she'd returned from Stormlands College. It hadn't made sense to spend money on a more expensive place when it was just the two of them and there was lots of room for the good enough mother-in-law unit that gave them both plenty of privacy. They didn't even have connecting walls, which was more than she could say for any apartment she would've rented, and she benefitted from having his larger kitchen and washer and dryer nearby when she needed them. 

Besides, while her father went on more than his share of dates, Brienne hadn't ever brought a man home and it didn't seem like it would start happening now. Though if she could, she knew exactly who she'd want it to be. 

Brienne exhaled sharply in the silence of her little one room house and dropped her luggage noisily on the floor. After promising they would catch up more over breakfast she had bid her father goodnight and retired, eager for sleep; how could she have taken literally only three steps alone before she thought of Jaime? 

“You're pathetic,” she said out loud to herself, going to the barely big enough bathroom to get ready. Because they'd built the house themselves, the shower was roomy enough for even her father, but there hadn't been much space left over for the sink and toilet and medicine cabinet. She didn't regret it, though; she'd had enough of ducking every time she wanted to be clean. She brushed her teeth and considered the shower now, wondering if there would be room for two tall people in it. 

“Quit it,” she sternly ordered her reflection, toothpaste foam hitting the mirror. Brienne brushed harder until her teeth were the cleanest they'd ever been and then she locked the door, shut off the lights, and laid down in the bed that had been familiar to her in January. It felt different now; _she_ felt different now. She'd been so scared of taking this chance and especially of taking it with Jaime, but that had been before she'd known there was more to him than the roguish, sinister bad guy he seemed so eager to portray. 

_He would like Tarth_, she thought, listening to the distant white noise of the ocean through her window screen. They weren't right on the beach, but near enough that the sound could carry when the rest of the world and her own restless thoughts were quiet. She fell asleep imaging them standing side-by-side with their toes in the sand while the ocean washed over their feet, welcoming them home.

* * *

The next morning Brienne knocked once on her dad's back door and entered on his call. He was in the kitchen, making omelettes as she knew he would be. He turned and smiled happily. 

“I know we usually only do Sunday breakfast, but I figured we'd missed enough you'd forgive me.” 

She kissed him on the cheek and fell into their familiar routine: Brienne setting the table and making the coffee, her dad cooking and humming a random assortment of sea shanties and classic rock under his breath. When the coffee was done she poured herself a mug and wandered around the first floor, looking for what was the same and what might have changed in her absence. There was a new vase on the small table in the hallway and he'd gotten a new rain jacket that was currently slung on the bannister of the stairs. But the most surprising addition was a cork board placed prominently over the fireplace in the living room, filled three-quarters of the way with pictures of her that had been printed out from the internet, the board's whole purpose in life seeming to be a place to capture her Lannister Corp career. 

Brienne took a sip of her coffee and scanned the photos, curious to see what he'd picked, nervous to see herself. There was one from winter testing, when she'd been in the car for the first time, her anxious eyes peering out from the helmet. Another one from later in winter testing, the helmet tucked under her arm as she engaged in conversation with Bronn, who was pointing at something on the car. He'd printed out an image of her in the gantry with the other engineers, all of them leaning forward except for her standing tall with her arms folded, watching the race. She guessed based on the look of the track it was probably Pentos. 

There were more, too, many taken of her from behind or the side during a race, some of her in the garage – here with Podrick, there with Willem or Bronn or Lucion. Then one of her and Jaime staring at each other in the parc fermé, him with his helmet off and grinning, her clutching her headset in her hands like an anchor. Tacked most prominently were two photos of which she had startlingly different memories. The first was a screencap from the Melisandre interview before the season began, which seemed so long ago it may as well have been a different lifetime. She'd been only the chief mechanic then, new and overwhelmed and reluctant to even talk to Jaime. The second was from the Lannisport poolside, when Jaime had picked her up in his arms. The photographer had captured the moment just before he'd leapt, and Brienne's heart thudded as she stared at the details of it. Jaime was carrying her easily, a wicked smile on his face as he stared down at her. She had one arm wrapped around his neck and the other reaching for space but she looked happy in a way she had never seen on her own face before. Brienne had never liked photographs of herself, had always been supernaturally aware of cameras since she was old enough to realize they did not like her, either. And even though in the picture her smile was too big, her face was alarmingly red, and her hair was a mess, for this one moment in time it didn't seem to matter, either to the woman in the photo or the woman standing there looking at it now. 

“You found my brag board,” her dad said, coming in from the kitchen. 

Brienne startled and looked over her shoulder. “This is embarrassing,” she said. He waved her off. 

“Too bad, short stuff.” Brienne laughed, the familiar nickname making her heart warm. He saved it only for when she was feeling down on herself; she loved it because he was the only person who could call her that. “Breakfast is ready, and then afterward you can talk me through all of these so I can hear all the behind-the-scenes gossip.” 

They spent a long, pleasant breakfast catching up, Brienne hyper aware of not talking too much about Jaime. Her father passed on stories from the garage, of Argella, of a woman he'd taken on a date recently who hadn't wanted to line dance so they couldn't have a second date. Her father loved dancing, though she suspected no woman ever expected that when they saw him. She had many fond memories of him dancing Galladon and her around their kitchen when she was little. When Galladon was older he'd just roll his eyes at their father and half-heartedly join in, but Brienne always enjoyed it. Her father was one of the few men in her life that wasn't surprised when she wanted some of the more feminine things other girls did. 

That afternoon there was a knock on the door and it was their neighbor, Argella Durrandon, trying to look teenager cool and, Brienne thought with a hidden smile, mostly failing. She had dusky skin and her black hair was chopped short and uneven. 

“Hey,” Argella said, fidgeting on the porch. “I heard you were coming home today.”

“For the break, yes. It's good to see you.” 

“Yeah, you too.” She glanced around and Brienne tugged her in for a quick hug, the girl wrapping herself tightly around Brienne's waist. “I've watched all the races,” Argella said. “They show you sometimes.”

Brienne grimaced but she tried to smile when Argella pulled away. “Enjoying your school break?”

“So much. You have to come see how I hacked together a motion-sensing camera system for our house that runs totally off of this Raspberry Pi.” On Brienne's confused look Argella grinned. “It's all legal, don't worry. I just wanted to say hi, since you'd been gone so long and everything.” 

“That's sweet of you, Argella. I'll come over later and you can show me what you've been up to.”

“Just the legal stuff.” 

“Yes,” Brienne said dryly. “Please don't make me accessory to a crime.” 

Argella waved and hurried off back to her own home and, Brienne suspected, the room where she spent most of her time. Like Brienne, Argella was an outcast among her peers, mostly by choice from what Brienne could tell, but she felt for the girl nonetheless. Especially now that Brienne had actual friends in Pod and Bronn and even Arya in a more distant way, and she finally felt their value. 

_And Jaime_, she reminded herself, though their friendship was not like the others'. If she needed someone to do something for her, she would call Podrick first; if she needed someone to give her advice, she'd call Bronn. If she wanted someone to have a bitch session about her job, Arya would be a good first choice. But if her world were falling apart, Jaime was the only one she'd want to turn to. He would not falter under the weight of her. 

Brienne sighed and reminded herself these three weeks were explicitly not about Jaime, were a chance for her to take a mental, emotional, and physical break from both him and the intensity of the daily grind. In an F1 season there were no such things as weekends off, just a day here or there that she spent cleaning her apartment, buying her groceries, and maybe watching TV for a few hours while her body unwound. Now she had many days of free time ahead of her and she would not spend them thinking about everything she'd left behind in King's Landing. 

She spent the next week helping out her dad around the house and the garage, stoically not thinking about Jaime even when she spent a solid day checking on her own F1 car, tuning it up and using everything she'd learned so far to make it run better and faster. 

Her father watched her at that for awhile, asking questions, listening thoughtfully to her answers. By the end of the day he was watching her with a new respect in his eyes. 

“You've grown so much,” he said when she stood and wiped her hands off for the final time. 

“I can't afford to grow any more,” she said wryly. 

“Brienne.” She looked over at him and was startled by the seriousness of his expression. “I shouldn't have kept you here so long.” 

“Here where? On Tarth?” He nodded. “Gods, Dad, it's not like I'm some locked-away maiden. I wanted to work here with you.” 

“You didn't know any better.”

“I did,” she said quietly. “I spent time in the lower circuits. I knew what I was missing and I never regretted it.” 

She shut and locked the door behind them as they moved back into the main garage bay. There was one car left for the day, a station wagon waiting on parts for a new clutch; everything else she and her dad had worked through. He'd given his new assistant the week off while Brienne helped out. 

They cleaned up the workbench, Brienne organizing the screwdrivers in the order she liked them while her dad tidied up the dirty rags. When he was done, he leaned against the bench to watch her putting away the rest of the tools. 

“I wish whatever drove you away from F2 hadn't happened,” he said abruptly. 

Brienne shrugged. “I do, too. But...” she stared down at the wrench in her hand and smiled a little. “Maybe I wouldn't have been in a place to take the position on Jaime's team if I had.” 

“That would've been a shame,” Selwyn agreed. “It suits you.” 

“I'm happy,” she said. 

Selwyn ran his hand over her hair and his smile was so sweet it brought tears to her eyes. “Before your mom died she made me swear to watch out for you and Gal. She wanted you to be happy more than anything else.” 

“Dad,” she said, exhaling shakily. He tugged her into his arms and she curled inside their warmth until her emotions were as steady and strong again as her father. Her phone beeped with a message and he let her go. 

“I hope that's a plan to do something besides just work the whole time you're here.” 

Brienne rolled her eyes and looked to see who it was, curious. She hadn't made plans with anyone on Tarth; the only people she'd wanted to see were her dad and Argella and maybe Goodwin and her uncle, and none of them would be texting her now. When she saw Jaime's name on her screen her heart lurched like someone stomping on the accelerator of an idling car. Her cheeks went hot and she felt her dad watching her curiously, which only made her blush harder. 

When she opened the message she saw Jaime had sent a picture and the words 'Any suggestions for places to eat?' underneath. Brienne peered at the photo and as the familiarity of the scene sunk in, she gasped. It was a beach here on Tarth, not far from her house, and when she glanced out the windows of the garage doors she saw the red and gold sky in the picture matched the sky outside. 

“Everything all right?” her dad asked and she glanced up at him and struggled for words for a moment. 

“It's Jaime,” she said. “He's here.”

* * *

Jaime stared at his phone and regretted every part of this. He should have gone to her house. He should have texted her to let her know he was coming. He should have asked if she even wanted him there. Showing up without warning and then sending her on some mysterious scavenger hunt to find him sounded romantic in his head but Brienne would probably hate it. What if the goodbye hug had just been a friendly one and he was too confused about his own feelings to realize it? 

How long ago had he sent his message? It felt like it had been an hour but when he checked the timestamp it had been two minutes. Three little dots appeared all of a sudden and he swallowed hard, waiting for Brienne's kind brush off. 

Then the dots disappeared and he stared harder at his phone, willing them to come back. _Fuck_ he thought. _She can't even think of how to tell me I wasted my time._ Or maybe she was diligently looking up the address of a restaurant she could send him to and then he could eat his fish alone and plan to go back to King's Landing tomorrow. It would be the best possible outcome at this point. 

The dots appeared again and swiftly after: 'I'm at my dad's garage.' 

Jaime blinked, nonplussed. What did that mean? She sent another message. 

'I can recommend a place or if you have time to wait I can take you.'

The air whooshed out of him in relief. He had all the time in the world for Brienne. But he couldn't say that over text, not until he saw her face again and made sure she actually was as interested as he was, that he hadn't misunderstood her reasons behind putting space between them. Instead he sent back, 'I can wait. It's beautiful here.' 

She sent back a blushing smile emoji. 'It's one of my favorite beaches. Be there in half an hour.' 

'I'll be here.' 

Jaime tucked his phone back into the pocket of his jacket and settled down on a scrubby patch of grass at the top of the beach, picking up a nearby smooth stone and rubbing his fingers over its multicolored striations. Unlike King's Landing, the beaches here were rockier and more wild, the ocean a fierce, untamed presence all around them. There was soft sand at the line where the waves met the shore, but you had to walk over rough, unforgiving ground to get there. A reward for the person brave and dedicated enough to try. There were a few children shrieking and running around in the low waves a distance away, two families on blankets up in the grassy area watching them, but the beach was otherwise deserted in this area. Jaime had picked it because it had looked peaceful and he knew her home was nearby based on the contract she'd filled out with Lannister Corp. 

It was turning cool as the night came in, and he pulled his jacket around him while he watched the sun turning the sapphire water gold when it dipped behind the horizon. He could picture Brienne walking the shore's edge in the sunset, her feet splashing through the tide coming in, her cheeks turning pink from the sea wind. When the stars started to blink on above, he imagined her looking up at them as she had the night of his birthday, all the sky reflected in her beautiful eyes. 

He heard the rumble of a truck approach and then park, idling, and Jaime glanced over his shoulder. Brienne slipped out of the passenger side of an old full-sized pick-up, saw her lean into the cab and say something to her father inside, before stepping back and slamming the door shut. He stood and brushed the dirt off of his jeans when the truck drove away. 

Brienne scanned the parking area and then the beach and when she saw him he noticed her intake of breath, the way she caught her lip between her teeth in a motion that had become achingly familiar. Jaime gave her a little wave and she smiled before ducking her head. He watched her walk towards him and became suddenly obsessed with what to do with his hands; he tried putting them on his hips, which felt too pose-y; folded his arms over his chest, which felt too aggressive. He settled for shoving them in his pockets, thumbs hanging out, and tried to look natural. 

She stopped a few feet away and he took her in, the faded blue jeans and gray t-shirt with 'Tarth Pirates' scrawled along the front. Her eyes turned nearly purple in the twilight. Her wide mouth, lush and pink.

_He_ still really wanted to kiss _her_, at least. 

“I see you didn't bother to wear your helmet,” she said, and Jaime laughed, startled and delighted. 

“I missed you too,” he replied dryly, and she flushed, the red rushing down her long neck to below her shirt. 

“What are you doing here?”

“You did promise me in Myr that you'd show me the best place to eat seafood on Tarth and I figured we had some time.” 

Brienne pushed the hair back out of her face, but the wind just ruffled it loose again. “You came all the way here for fish?”

“I was told it was the best fish anywhere.” 

“It is,” she said firmly and gods he didn't think he could take another minute of not touching her but they hadn't even talked yet and he couldn't just step into her space and press his lips to hers, chapped and probably tasting of the sea. Could he?

“Jaime?”

He blinked, realized she had asked him something while he'd briefly fantasized about kissing her on the beach. “Sorry, what?”

“I can take you to my favorite place to eat if you want.” 

“I'd like that,” he said hurriedly. He didn't want her to think he wasn't listening because he wasn't interested. “You're okay being seen with me?”

“I don't have much choice, do I?” 

He winced a little but put on a bright smile. “There's no media here, no one will know. My motorcycle is parked just up there.” 

“We can walk, it's not far.” 

“Is it just because I don't have helmets? Because I actually did pack them, I just left them at my hotel.” 

She frowned. “You have a hotel room?”

“Yes?”

“I...assumed you would leave after dinner.” 

“That's a long way back late at night.” He hesitated, not sure whether to tell her he'd booked the room for the next week and a half and then decided to see how dinner went first. 

She seemed to accept his answer at face value because she gestured for him to start down the road, walking at his side. “How's your break been?” she asked after they'd settled, their steps already aligning. 

“I kicked Lancel's butt at miniature golf. They'll be releasing that and some other things over the next couple weeks all over social media and the news sites.” 

“I saw the rollerblading one,” she said. “You looked ridiculous.” 

“It's hard to make rollerblades look good,” he said defensively. 

“I'm sure Renly could do it.”

Jaime glared at her and she just gave him a coolly knowing look that somehow managed to both agitate him and make him want her more. How did she _do_ that? 

“Are you sure we can't take my bike? I feel weird leaving it back there,” he muttered. 

“Tarth is very safe, no one will touch it.” 

“I'm holding you responsible if they do.” 

“You go back then and I'll walk by myself.” 

She would, too. Just keep marching along without a backward glance. “You're very stubborn,” he muttered.

“You're very annoying,” she grumbled back and they walked in silence for another few minutes while Jaime thought dark thoughts about ever wanting to hire her in the first place until they came around a corner and a short distance away was a cozy looking, brightly lit house with a sign stating 'House of Fish.' 

“House of Fish?” Jaime said out loud in disbelief. “You're pulling my leg.” 

She hunched her shoulders and picked up speed, her slightly longer legs easily putting her in front of him. He had to nearly jog to keep up with her, though she slowed when they reached the porch. “This is it,” she said, sounding anxious. 

“The best seafood anywhere?” 

“Yes,” she said, biting off the word. “You don't have to try it, you can just leave and be convinced of your own superiority.” 

“I'm not-” he huffed, annoyed. This was not the start to the evening he had anticipated on the ferry ride over. “I look forward to trying it,” he said, managing to modulate his tone enough that some of her tension eased and she opened the door for him. 

Warmth rushed out, along with low, cheerful pop music and inviting smells. He stepped inside and took it all in. They'd cleared out all but the back walls to make space for a collection of small, mis-matched tables and chairs. The restaurant was about half-full and everyone looked happy, or at least as happy as Stormlanders ever looked, Jaime mused. The server at the cash register smiled politely when he saw Jaime, but when he saw Brienne the smile turned welcoming. 

“I heard you were back!” he said cheerfully, grabbing two menus. “Why did it take you so long to stop by?” 

She shrugged and didn't quite meet his eyes. “Busy, I guess.” 

The young man, Jaime guessed he was around Brienne's age, had dark skin and eyes and short, bushy black hair. His smile was white and admiring for Brienne, and Jaime both liked him and hated him instantly for it. The man wove them through the tables to a nice spot in one of the quieter corners and set the menus down. 

“Who's cooking tonight, Arryk?” 

“Not my brother, so you should actually enjoy your meal,” he said with a friendly laugh that Brienne shared as she sat. Arryk finally took his eyes off Brienne to look at Jaime as he sat down, too, and Jaime saw the slow dawning of recognition. “Oh shit you're Jaime Lannister,” Arryk said. 

“The one and only,” Jaime smiled, allowing himself just a hint of feralness to it. “You can have my autograph when I pay for dinner.” Arryk blinked and under the table Brienne stepped on Jaime's foot. 

“Ignore him, he's hangry,” she told Arryk, who stifled a laugh. 

“Then I better let you look at your menus,” he said. “It's slow tonight so I'll be your server. I'll be back with some water and biscuits.” 

Jaime glared down at his menu after Arryk had left. “I'm not hangry.” 

He could _feel_ Brienne's eyeroll. “I recommend any of the fresh fish,” she said, ignoring him, which he was probably grateful for. He needed to reboot this whole evening and start again but he was going to just have to change the mood by letting her order his meal for him. 

“Since it's your good word on the line, you pick the meal,” he said, closing his menu. 

“Are you sure?”

“I trust you.” 

She smiled, a small twitch of her lips that made his heart beat hard. “Any allergies?” she asked. “Anything you really dislike?”

“No and no. I have an eager tongue,” he said in a low voice, and was rewarded with a significant flush. 

“Ok,” she said, her voice high. “I'll pick for us then. Stop talking so I can focus.” 

He watched her scanning the menu, the way her eyes narrowed in consideration, how she licked her lips thoughtfully and seemed to talk to herself. When had she started looking so adorable to him? The crooked line of her nose was like a contracted esse he wanted to run his finger down; her broad forehead and solid jaw made her look honest and trustworthy; and her eyes – he had been fixated on her eyes since they'd first met his and he'd seen only disgust in them. Now when she looked up, after finally nodding and closing the menu, they were bright and warm and it made them even more beautiful; deep pools that deserved attention but never demanded it. Arryk returned with their water and biscuits while Jaime stared helplessly into her eyes, and Brienne ordered efficiently, sending Arryk quickly on his way once more. 

“What _are_ you doing here?” she asked after folding her long-fingered hands on the table. “Is it a media thing?”

“We finished all that a couple days ago. I came to Tarth because...” He wasn't sure even he knew how to end that sentence. _Because you were here_ seemed the most honest, but that felt like too much even to him. “I don't have many other friends.” 

“I can't imagine why,” she murmured, sipping her water. 

He let that go. “Work was done and for the first time I'm actually ahead in the World Championship points. Well ahead. I don't feel like I have to spend the two weeks berating myself and trying to get better. I was a bit at loose ends and it seemed like a waste to spend the entire time watching television.”

“You could read some books.” 

“Do you not want me here?” he asked, quiet, and she went still. 

“No, it's not that. I'm just surprised, that's all. I thought you'd have plans. Other...people to be with.” 

“I don't.” It hit him abruptly that she might be projecting. “Do you? Have plans or other people to be with?”

Brienne laughed once, a surprised sound. “No,” she said, as though the fact that he'd even asked was the most absurd part of the evening. 

He took a biscuit for himself and handed one to her. “Then let's enjoy our free time before it all disappears again, shall we?” he asked, tapping his biscuit to hers like they were wine glasses. Brienne grinned a little and they each took a bite. 

They chatted their way through a fried scallop appetizer, a salad sprinkled with fresh shrimp, and a cup of clam chowder so good that Jaime moaned loudly enough over the first bite of it the couple at the table next to him gave him a strange look. Brienne was looking at him, too, her eyes wide and wondering, her mouth open a little. 

“Good chowder,” he said, slurping another spoonful. This time, he noticed, she watched his mouth, and he felt a slow burn in his belly. 

When they'd finished off the main course, Jaime had to admit she was right: it was the best seafood he had ever had. How much of that was the food and how much of that was the company, he couldn't have said. 

“Dessert?” Arryk asked as he came to clear away their empty plates. 

Brienne glanced at Jaime and he groaned. “Gods, no, I'm going to explode if I even smell more food.” 

“A danger at the House of Fish. I'll go get your bill,”Arryk said cheerfully, expertly loading both arms with everything and hurrying away. 

“Well?” Brienne asked, her eyes brightly amused. “What's the verdict? I expect you to lie, but I want to hear you say it out loud so I can hold it against you later.” 

“You were right,” Jaime said. “It's incredible.” 

Her face softened with genuine pleasure, giving her a look of such sweet satisfaction he nearly leaned across the table to kiss her then and there. 

“I'm still holding this against you,” she said, but her tone was airy. 

Arryk came back with the bill and set it in the middle of the table. He glanced at Jaime. “Mr. Lannister, would it be possible to get a selfie with you? My brother would be so jealous I got to meet you tonight. We're both huge Formula 1 fans.” 

“Of course. Brienne, come get in the picture with us.” But she shook her head, looking nervous. 

“I'll take the picture for you.” She took Arryk's phone while Jaime stood next to the man and gave the charming surface smile he used for fans. 

“You'll be rooting for us in a few weeks, I hope?” Jaime asked as Arryk checked the picture. 

“Well, no, we're both Stag Motors fans, being Stormlanders and all. But we're rooting for Brienne!” 

Jaime snorted and grabbed the bill. “I hear that a lot,” he said. Brienne bit down hard on her lip and he could see she was trying to hold back a pleased smile. “Go ahead and gloat,” he told her. 

“Have a good evening,” Arryk said, tucking his phone away again. “Thanks for stopping by, and for the photo!” 

The prices were more than reasonable for the quality of the food and Jaime shook his head as he left a fifty percent tip and a quick note - _charge more for the chowder, it's phenomenal_ \- before signing with a flourish. 

They stood and Jaime held the door for her on the way out saying, “after you, my lady” which Brienne only rolled her eyes at as she walked by. They started back down the dark road to the beach. There were no streetlights along the way, but the moon was nearly full and everything looked shining and silver, the sea an endless mirror of reflected magic. 

“You haven't called me Wrench once yet,” Brienne said after a minute. 

“You haven't called me Lannister.” 

“I suppose not.” 

They were quiet for another minute, long enough that Jaime debated with himself about whether to try and hold her hand as they walked. He had just fought down the anxious butterflies and decided to do it when Brienne said, “I need to tell you something.” 

The butterflies all immediately dropped dead to the bottom of his stomach. “Okay.” 

“I don't....not want to be seen with you.” 

He swallowed, his brain not able to parse the negatives in his nervous state. “What?”

“I'm not ashamed to be seen with you. That's not why we can't go places together.” 

“I know. We've talked about this.” 

She stopped, shaking her head. Her freckled face was as large and pale as the moon. “We have, but you're here anyway so I don't think you get it. I'm not just doing this for me, Jaime. I'm doing this for you, too.”

“For me?”

“Of course I don't want people to think we...that I became your race engineer for some illicit reason. But they're going to think that anyway whether we hang out together or not. It's already happened back when I didn't even like you.” 

“Dark days,” he said, but she only frowned at his light-hearted tone. 

“Don't you understand? If someone sees you here on Tarth, they're not going to just say things about _me_ anymore. They're going to start saying things about you. To you. They'll think you came here for some...wild weekend with me.” She was red now and getting redder. 

“It's Wednesday,” he said and she sighed like he was a burden she could no longer bear. 

“That's not the point! The point is I can't take selfies with you while you're on vacation. People will post them and then other people will find them and they'll think we're, that we're-”

“Fucking?”

He was afraid for a moment that he had broken her given the way her cheeks seemed to go almost purple in the moonlight, but she nodded sharply and stared down at their feet. “Yes. I don't want your every interview from here to the end of the season to be about that. You've got a real chance to win this year, Jaime. We can't distract from that just because you want to be friends who do things together. I can wait.”

“I can't,” he said and he cupped her cheeks in his palms – she _was_ warm when she blushed, he finally discovered, burning like a hot coal in his hands – and lifted up a little to kiss her. 

Brienne's body was as stiff as the wrench he liked to call her, but her mouth was soft and startled under his, and she tasted like the dessert he'd sworn he was too full for. He would always be hungry for this, he thought, the heat of her in his hands and against his lips. Her fingers gripped him at the waist and she was strong and gentle all at once even as she pushed him back a step. 

“What...” words and breath both had left her as she stared at him with her huge eyes. 

“I'm kissing you,” he said, almost a growl in the darkness, and he saw her shiver a little. 

“But why?”

“Because I want to, you foolish woman.” 

That seemed to jerk her out of the shocked trance she was in and she glared at him. “I was just telling you-”

“That you're trying to protect my maidenly virtue, yes, I recall. I don't care, Brienne. That's what I'm trying to tell _you_. I don't care if you're the only thing they ask me about even as I'm standing on the podium in King's Landing at the end of the year holding my World Championship trophy, as long as you let me kiss you again right now.” 

Her lips opened, closed, opened again, and Jaime wondered if he really had read her interest completely wrong. Then she grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket and pulled him into her and the swell of vindication was swept away by the hurricane force of desire. The blood rushing in his veins was louder than the ocean at his back as he kissed her hungrily, discovering the salt and savory taste of her, her full lips a feast all on their own. Her approach was awkward and eager at once, and when her tongue tentatively swept over his he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her hard against him. This wasn't the gentle or excited hugs of the past, this was pure need fusing them together, their banked desire finally set alight. He was desperate to have her touching him, marveled at how her size let her meet every part of his body with hers, so perfectly fitting that he could have stripped them both down and slid into her with barely an effort and oh that had him hardening just at the thought and she gasped into his mouth, warm and wet and he slid his tongue inside and this was it he was going to lay her down on the asphalt and take her right there in another minute. Except the sound of an approaching vehicle burst between them and a second later so did the lights and they jumped apart like they'd been burned. 

They were both panting hard, Jaime's fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides, his cock straining in his jeans as he stared at her big lips fuller and redder from his kisses and all he wanted was _more_. The car slowed as it neared them and then stopped and Jaime realized it was the truck that had dropped her off at the beach and he almost laughed aloud when the window rolled down and Selwyn's voice boomed out, “evening, you two! Need a lift?”

_Do not curse out her father_ Jaime warned himself. “We're fine,” he said tightly. “Just enjoying the fresh ocean air.” 

“It's no trouble,” Selwyn said. “Truck has plenty of room for all three of us.” 

“The beach isn't far, Dad,” Brienne said and Jaime was pleased to hear how breathless she was, to see how wide her pupils were. 

“It's dangerous to walk without any safety lights,” Selwyn said, gently scolding. 

Brienne looked helplessly at Jaime and he sighed. “Quite right, Mr. Tarth,” he said glumly. “I suppose we should take your kind offer.” 

“Fantastic,” Selwyn said relieved, and Brienne looked at Jaime so gratefully that it soothed the ache of how much he would rather have kept kissing her. But they had a week and a half before they had to be back at King's Landing, surely he would find plenty of other times for it; in the meantime he could do this for her and her dad both, show them he was interested in more than just a quick fuck with Brienne.

Not that he would have turned that down right now, either. 

Jaime opened the door and gestured for her to get in first and then he climbed in after, their thighs pressed together on the bench seat. He kept his hands folded in his lap as his erection faded and he tried not to imagine they were in the back of the truck instead where he could secretly slip his hand up her shirt and no one but Brienne would know. 

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Lannister.” 

“Please, call me Jaime.”

“As long as you call me Selwyn.” 

Jaime smiled at him. “Deal.”

“What brings you to Tarth?”

“The promise of excellent seafood,” he said lightly, catching Brienne's slight smile. 

“She took you to House of Fish, didn't she? Best seafood anywhere.” 

“That's what I'd been told and it seems it was correct. How's your shop?”

“Keeping me busy, which is good, but not so busy I can't keep up with your season. You're doing remarkably well this year.” 

“Entirely thanks to Brienne,” Jaime said and she ducked her head between them. 

“Well I'm sure you're overstating that on behalf of her father, but it's good to hear anyway. Didn't I tell you she was the best mechanic in Westeros?”

“You did. She makes a damn good race engineer, too.” 

Selwyn glanced at him, a considering look in his eye. “I wouldn't have thought of it but you were right to see it.” He looked back at the road and slowed over to the side; Jaime's bike glinted in the headlights of the truck. “Gods above, is that an Iron Throne?” 

“Would you like to see it?”

“I'd love to.” 

“I had planned to stay a few days,” Jaime said, trying to sound casual. “I can stop by your garage tomorrow so you can take a look in the daylight.” 

“I don't want to mess up your plans,” Selwyn said but it was clear that was just a polite formality. Jaime grinned a bit, seeing more clearly why Brienne was the way she was. 

“I had no plans other than seeing Brienne and enjoying my time here. I'm happy to do it.” 

Selwyn nodded and the smile on his face was boyish. “I'll be in the garage all day tomorrow. Come by early and you can take my daughter away to do something that isn't work.” 

“I'd like that very much,” Jaime said. Brienne was red and fidgeting next to him. 

“I can show you the ruins of Morne,” she said uncertainly. “They're on the eastern side of the island. It's more deserted over there.” 

Jaime pictured them walking alone among old ruins, the sunlight sparkling off the sea and Brienne's eyes, tugging her into the shadow of an old stone wall to kiss her like a knight might have with his lady. “That sounds perfect.” He opened the door of the truck and got out before he did or said something improper in front of her father, slammed it shut again and met Brienne's eyes through the open window. 

“Thank you for the company tonight,” he said and she brushed her fingers against her lips, clearly remembering more than just dinner. 

“Tomorrow, then?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he promised. She swallowed and then smiled shyly at him, and even though he and Selwyn said goodbye, even though the sound of his motorcycle starting up was a comforting rumble in the night, even though the road back to his hotel was serene, Jaime's heart was still pounding as he lay in bed waiting anxiously for the night to end and tomorrow to arrive.


	12. August (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had kissed. Her stomach looped over itself at the memory, a shiver of delight running through her. Jaime had put his hot palms on her cheeks and kissed her like he wanted to, like he'd been wanting to for maybe as long as she'd wanted him to. Gods could he kiss, too, a promise made and fulfilled all at once, and still just a hint of what his talented mouth could do. 'I have an eager tongue,' he'd said at the restaurant and she'd nearly melted into the floor. 
> 
> She pressed her own hands to her cheeks and felt the difference between her calloused palms and how his had felt. No one had ever touched her like that, like they were grateful to be doing it. Her body trembled with the memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a shitload of writing done in the last couple days, so have another chapter! Also based on how some of these later months are falling out, I've upped the total chapter count to account for the additions.

Jaime had kissed her. 

They had stood in the moonlight by the side of the road and he'd looked so aggravated with her that she thought he would just storm off, but he had kissed her instead. 

And then she had kissed him back. 

Brienne stared out the window of her dad's truck as he drove them home and she pressed her fingers to her lips, remembering the feel of Jaime's mouth on hers, of the craving behind it, like he had come to Tarth only for this. For her. 

They parked and Brienne climbed out, knowing her dad was watching her curiously and also that he wouldn't pry, at least not too directly. Which was for the best; all she could see was Jaime's face in the glare of headlights, how he'd been looking at her like he'd looked at her car all those months ago. Brienne took the side path to her little house and her dad cleared his throat, bringing her up short. 

“I know it's summer but would you like some hot chocolate? I've got my special ingredient.” His special ingredient was peppermint schnapps. 

“No, I'm really full, I was just going to go relax for a bit.” 

“All right.” He pressed his lips together before saying, “I hope you don't mind that I made that arrangement between you and Jaime tomorrow. I know you're not his biggest fan, but you seem to be getting along and I really do hate to see you spend your entire break in the garage. I want this to be a vacation for you, and not a working one.” 

Brienne almost burst into hysterical giggles. Not Jaime's biggest fan? She might have been having sex with him right out there in the open if her dad had showed up two minutes later. “It's fine. You're right, I should do something less like work for at least a few days. And Jaime is...” she had even less idea of how to describe him now. “We get along fine.” 

Her dad smiled wide with relief and nodded his head. “Good, good. He seems different from when he was here the first time. More relaxed. I guess winning will do that for you.” 

“I guess it will.” She edged towards her path. 

“The ruins sound like a fun idea. Maybe I'll close up early and join you for a late lunch.” 

She very much did not want her father going with them to the ruins but she just nodded gamely. “Maybe.”

“Well, goodnight darling.”

“Goodnight, Dad.” She hurried into her own house and leaned back against the front door when it was closed, exhaling slowly. 

They had kissed. Her stomach looped over itself at the memory, a shiver of delight running through her. Jaime had put his hot palms on her cheeks and kissed her like he wanted to, like he'd been wanting to for maybe as long as she'd wanted him to. Gods could he kiss, too, a promise made and fulfilled all at once, and still just a hint of what his talented mouth could do. 'I have an eager tongue,' he'd said at the restaurant and she'd nearly melted into the floor. 

She pressed her own hands to her cheeks and felt the difference between her calloused palms and how his had felt. No one had ever touched her like that, like they were grateful to be doing it. Her body trembled with the memory. Brienne got ready for bed, but once she was lying down in the dark she just stared up at the ceiling, completely awake. 

What if he regretted it tomorrow? 

_Don't be an idiot_ she told herself. Neither of them had had alcohol with dinner and she hadn't even been the one to bring it up; in fact she'd tried to convince him of exactly the opposite. The media would have a field day just with pictures of them enjoying themselves as friends on Tarth, they'd be relentless if they knew their salacious rumors were true. Brienne frowned into the black. 

What if _she_ regretted it? 

Would Melisandre bring it up during the Women of F1 interview that she and Arya had scheduled for next month? Would Lancel and the others think that if she and Jaime were...whatever they were now, that their earlier vile thoughts were also true? Would her own crew think less of her? What about the girls that looked up to her? 

Brienne's breathing was too fast and shaky and she clutched at the bedsheets and tried to slow it down, imagined the air moving in and out of her chest like calm waves on the shore, the way Galladon had taught her when she was a kid and had been upset after someone had made fun of her. 

She and Jaime had kissed one time and had plans only to spend the day looking at ruins together tomorrow. It didn't serve to spiral into anxiety about the rest now when she couldn't do anything about it. Tomorrow in the bright sunlight they would see each other more clearly and they could both see if this was something they wanted when everything wasn't turned gentle by moonlight. 

_No more kissing until we talk about it_, she promised herself, turning over in bed, feeling resolute though still no more able to sleep. _No matter what he does in the morning._

* * *

What he did was show up at her father's garage in comfortable jeans and a tight black t-shirt, his hair windswept from the ride on his motorcycle. With his scuffed boots and riding jacket slung over his shoulder he looked like a romance novel hero there to sweep her off her feet so he could do untold things to her while he whispered dirty words in her ear. When he bit his lower lip with a sultry smirk, Brienne was certain she would combust right there in the garage. 'Local woman dies of spontaneous hormones' the headline would read and under it a picture of Jaime just like this. No one would blame her. 

“Good morning, Brienne. I hope you slept well,” he said in a low, knowing voice. 

She had slept badly, because once she stopped thinking about kissing him she remembered the way his cock had been hard against her and that had led to thinking about what it would be like to feel him inside her and that had led to having to get up and take a long shower to wash the wetness away. 

“I slept just fine,” she managed to get out. “Still no helmet, I see. Do you want a head injury?”

“Not much to hurt in here,” he said, knocking his knuckles against his forehead. 

“You should at least try to protect your face, it's your best quality.”

Jaime grinned and licked his lips. “Brienne, I-”

“Good morning!” Selwyn said, coming into the garage waiting room from the back. “Thought I heard you out here. You brought your bike?”

Jaime smiled thinly. “Right out front.”

“You can leave it here with me today, if that's all right? Brienne can drive you two in my truck.” 

“That will do. You know Brienne has done some test driving for us, even a few free practice laps.” 

“I know, and I hope you're paying her to account for the extra responsibilities,” he said, clearly not joking. 

“Dad,” she hissed. Had he always been such a helicopter parent, or had she just never noticed because she'd been a helicopter kid? 

“What? I know how undervalued women are in sports and I just want to be sure you're being compensated for what you're worth.” 

“Her contract was renegotiated back in March,” Jaime assured him. The increase had been significant and now she not only could easily pay her rent and bills, she was stocking away a sum for once the season was through. She hadn't decided what to do with it yet, but it comforted her to know it was there. The money-back guarantee had also been stripped out, a gesture that felt like an indication of trust.

“Well, good,” Selwyn said gruffly. “You two should head off. It's a bit of a drive to the other side of the island and I don't want you to miss the nicest part of the day.” He handed Brienne the keys and kissed her on the forehead and sent them on their way. 

They were quiet until after they'd climbed into the truck and Brienne had pulled out onto the main road that wound all the way around Tarth. “It'll take a couple hours to get there,” she said, “so I hope you brought some reading material.” 

“I thought I'd talk to you. But why so long – Tarth isn't that big, is it? Just drive across the middle and you're there.”

“There are no roads right across the middle. It's all mountains and valleys. We've left it mostly unpaved to preserve the natural beauty. Waterfalls, clear lakes, rivers that cut through the trees.” 

He stared at her and she felt her cheeks redden. “Sounds incredible. We should check it out.” 

“The best ones take some hiking to get there and you don't really strike me as the camp out under the stars type.” 

“I could become one. Besides, we'd be very alone out there.” His voice had dropped a full register and it was registering right between her legs. 

Brienne swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel. “Jaime, we should talk.” 

“Oh?” His voice was much higher that time. “Don't tell me that kiss was the result of food coma or I'll throw myself out of this moving vehicle right now.”

“You don't have to be so dramatic,” she said, exasperated. “But we should talk about...the kiss.” 

“Did you like it?”

Brienne kept her gaze firmly on the road, afraid she'd drive them off it if she turned to look at Jaime. “I did.”

“I did, too. Park so we can do it again.”

“Jaime,” she sighed, but she heard the smile in her own voice. “I still don't know if it's a good idea.” She had woken up not fully accepting that Jaime Lannister, easily the most attractive man she had ever seen, was interested in her, likely the ugliest woman he had ever seen. There had even been a moment when the clock showed three am that she'd believed he was tricking her just as Connington and Hyle and the others had. She'd carried that worry with her until this morning, when he still looked as interested in her in the unforgiving sunlight as he had last night in the much kinder moonlight. A fairy tale, for sure, but one she couldn't disprove based on how he was still looking at her now; Brienne could be stubborn but not that stubborn, not when her devilish prince had come to seduce her away. 

“I want to do much more than kiss you, Brienne.” His voice was as smooth and amber as fresh oil, and it had the same affect on her insides. 

“That's nice,” she squeaked and he chuckled. “But whatever it is we do you have to know what it will mean. For both of us.” She did glance at him then and saw he was finally watching her seriously. “They'll come for me first, with questions, and shaming. And then they'll turn on you. Not just the media, either, but Lancel and his crew. Your sister. Your father.” 

Jaime was glaring out the window now, his fingers holding tight to the dashboard. “Fucking Lannisters,” he grumbled. 

“You say that like you're not one of them.”

“I was including myself.” 

She touched his knee gently and he tensed. “You're not like them,” she said.

“If you think that then maybe you're too brainwashed for me to kiss you again.”

“Jaime,” she said a third time, this one a resigned sigh, and put her hand safely back on the wheel. 

“What do you propose then? I want to kiss you, obviously, and you seem to want to kiss me.” She felt him waiting for her so she nodded in agreement. “Do we just...not kiss?”

She considered it: the aggravating tension of having to work at his side for months and months knowing what he felt like against her, knowing he wanted that – and more – as much as she did and not being able to do anything about it; versus what she was certain would be an overly publicized, hunted experience broken by the intense, fleeting moments they'd have together where they weren't working. 

“I don't know,” she said miserably.

“What if we kept it secret?”

“The kissing?”

“Yeah.” He straightened a little in the seat. “It's the best of both worlds. Neither of us gets any more harassed by the vultures than we already are, but we still get the rest of it, too.” 

“That sounds risky.” 

“I love a good risk,” he said. 

“I don't.”

He carefully pried her hand off of the steering wheel and brought it to his lips, kissing the inside of her wrist tenderly, then further up to the soft bend of her elbow until she had goosebumps all over. “Perhaps this risk would be worth it,” he murmured against her skin. 

“Jaime,” she breathed and she felt the pleased huff of his breath on her arm. 

“Don't say my name like that over the radio or we'll both be in trouble.” 

She pulled her arm away but he stayed leaning towards her, gazing at her intently. “What if something happens and we...stop kissing?” she asked.

“That seems very unlikely.”

“People always say workplace romances are the most dangerous.” 

Jaime grunted. “People should mind their own business.” He drummed his fingers on his leg. “If it happens that we want to stop, then we'll just go back to being co-workers and friends.” 

“As simple as that?”

“Yes, Brienne, as simple as that,” he said, his frustration clear. “Don't deny yourself something that you and I both want because it might end badly.” 

In her experience everything _did_ end badly; but she supposed his life was the same as hers in that regard. Maybe this time would be different for both of them. 

“I guess we could try it, here, on Tarth, and see how it goes.” 

“A secret summer island romance? I'm in.” 

Brienne snorted. “Emphasis on the 'secret,' Jaime. No compromising selfies, no holding hands while we tour the towns. Secret. As far as anyone else needs to know, including my father, we're just friends.” She glanced at him and shook her head. “And you have to stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what? I'm just looking!”

But he hadn't been just looking; he'd been contemplating her with the same single-minded intensity of a lion after its prey, and with possibly as much biting involved. 

The idea of it had her whole body flushing red, her breath coming harder. 

“Gods, we're doomed,” she groaned.

* * *

Their first outing as a secret, well, couple, Brienne thought, went mostly according to plan. It didn't feel right to think of her and Jaime in that way – they'd been so focused on just the kissing parts and not everything else that frankly she wasn't ready to even _look_ at that can of worms let alone open it yet – but this was all so far out of her experience she didn't know what else to call it. They'd held hands in the truck and talked about her life on Tarth, Jaime asking questions about where she went to school and what it had been like growing up with just her dad, and Brienne pointing out spots that held good memories as they passed them. It had been comfortable and warm and she had tucked away Jaime's smile and deep-chested laugh for a future night when she might have only the ghosts of them. 

The ruins snared Jaime's interest as Brienne showed him around the crumbling stone castle, giving an in-depth tour. She'd done docent work here giving this same tour to tourists one summer in high school at the suggestion of her father, who'd thought the experience would give her confidence. Mostly it had given her a useless amount of Age of Heroes knowledge and well-toned calves from the all the walking. 

“My brother was named after a legendary knight of Morne,” she said as they read a sign that talked about the history of the area. “Ser Galladon.” 

“A strong name. I'm sorry about the loss of your brother,” Jaime offered. “He seemed to mean a lot to you.” He briefly touched her shoulder, and Brienne blinked back unexpected tears.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. She squeezed his hand and then led him to the next sign. 

They were not the only ones there, which wasn't surprising given how nice the day was. The sky was wide and blue above them, dotted with only a few puffy, pure white clouds, and the view of the sea from atop the only stable tower left standing was breathtaking, an endless view of deep blue blending upward into bright. It was easy to believe Tarth was the only place in the world on days like this, though she could feel more than see a slight darkening on the western horizon that she knew was the mainland hiding behind the island's mountains. 

Jaime had taken what felt like a hundred photos of the area and she heard the click of his phone camera yet again as she stared out over the sea. When she turned, he had his phone pointed at her. 

“No pictures,” she reminded him. 

“We're not together. It's just you against the sea that pales in comparison to your eyes.” 

Brienne blushed and shook her head. “You're much more of a sweet-talker here than you've ever been at work.” 

“The magic of Tarth,” he said, moving in closer. He brushed his hand down her arm, until his fingers curled briefly around hers. “Just one quick kiss,” he promised as he stepped even nearer, and then he did, a brief press of his lips to hers that had her eyes fluttering closed. “That was a mistake,” he murmured from centimeters away. “Now I want another one.” 

Brienne put her hand against his chest, felt his heart beating under his soft t-shirt. The sound of footsteps on the stairs leading up to where they were had her pushing him back and he smiled ruefully but turned away. 

They'd wandered around some more until the sea wind changed and started blowing in cool as it did every afternoon, and Brienne's stomach growled. “A bit late for lunch, but there's a place a little north of here where we could grab an early dinner. It's not as good as House of Fish, but it's pretty good.” 

“I don't know, I feel like I've grown accustomed to a certain quality of seafood now.” 

Brienne shoved him towards the truck and he laughed. They talked of his childhood then, a little of his early karting years with Addam but mostly about the trouble he and Tyrion would get up to, the way they'd annoy Cersei and their nanny with their antics. 

“Tyrion is quite fond of you, you know,” Jaime said as she parked in front of a bland-looking family restaurant called simply 'Maeve's.' 

“We haven't talked that much, but he's quite a character.” 

“His life hasn't been easy.”

“That's true for many of us,” Brienne said, trying not to make it sound like a reprimand. They got a booth by the window and ordered food – fish and chips for Jaime, fish tacos for her. 

As she took a drink of water, Jaime said, “so what's your stance on us fucking?”

“You know this is your fault,” she said later after she'd stopped coughing and he'd cleaned up the water she'd accidentally spit in his face. Her own face was still burning with embarrassment, but Jaime only looked amused by the whole situation. 

“I'll allow that.” 

“Why would you even ask me that while we're in a family establishment?” she whispered fiercely. 

“Because I love when you look so shocked and offended.” 

“Jaime.”

“Brienne.” 

She glared at him and his smug smile and his sparkling green eyes. “I'm not going to talk about it here.”

“Then I'll just ask in the truck.” 

He would, she knew, which meant their early dinner became a quiet, slightly nerve-wracking affair for her as she considered what she would say. Was she ready to have sex with Jaime? Her body certainly was, but she wasn't sure about the rest of her. He was a force of nature, as rumbling with energy and danger as the car he drove, and she didn't trust her ability to not steer them both straight into a wall. 

After their meal they got back in the truck and she started it up with slightly trembling hands, waiting for him to ask her again. 

“I booked my hotel room until the end of next week,” he said, surprising her in a different way. 

“Confident today would go well?”

“I booked it before I even arrived on Tarth.” 

Brienne glanced at him but he was looking out at the coastline already starting to warm with the impending sunset. “What do you want to do tomorrow, then?” she asked. 

He looked her way and the open hunger on his face made it clear what he wanted to do with her. “It's up to you,” was all he said, and she chewed her lip for a long time as they continued the drive back to the garage. 

As they neared she finally offered, “do you want to go karting? The place I learned at as a kid holds adult only times Monday through Thursdays.” 

“I haven't been karting in years but I have to warn you, I'm very competitive.” 

“So am I.” 

He grinned at her. “You're on.”

* * *

Though Jaime had wanted nothing more than to kiss Brienne again – and again, and again – when they arrived at the garage, he had only squeezed her hand in the truck and then indulged Selwyn's enthusiastic ramblings for nearly an hour about the bike. The man knew his stuff, though, and had spent some of his day tuning the bike up so that when Jaime started it, it roared in a way it hadn't since he'd first bought the thing. Selwyn had refused payment, seemingly just thrilled that they'd spent the whole day together, Brienne out having a good time instead of working. 

“She always works too much,” Selwyn said as they'd both watched her organizing the tools in the garage. 

“She works harder than anyone on my team,” Jaime agreed. 

“I worry too much about her, I know, but I can't stop.”

“She has a soft heart,” Jaime murmured, and he tried not to be intimidated by Selwyn's immediate sharp-eyed stare. 

“I'm glad you recognize that about her.” 

“Well,” Jaime said, trying to be nonchalant, “it's hard to miss. Especially when compared to the rest of my crew.” 

“The boy she always tells me about – Podrick? He seems all right.” 

“They're thick as thieves. He jumped right in to fight Martyn after the garage incident, didn't even hesitate from what I heard.” 

Selwyn tilted his head. “Garage incident?”

“When Brienne hurt her wrist.” 

“She hurt her wrist?”

She hadn't told him. Jaime sighed and tried to step back out of the trap he'd inadvertently sprung. “There was a disagreement between her and one of the pit crew. She sprained her wrist during it and Podrick came to her defense. The man, Martyn, no longer works for Lannister Corp, so it won't happen again.”

“I see.” Selwyn was frowning and Jaime quietly cursed himself and Brienne both. Why hadn't she told him? What other mines were lying in wait for Jaime to blunder into? “It's getting late and Brienne and I should close up,” Selwyn added. 

Jaime could take a hint. “I'll just wish her good night and head off,” he said, hurrying to Brienne. She looked up, smiling, at his approach. 

“Thanks for talking to my dad about the bike. You've made his day.”

“I seemed to also have ruined it,” Jaime said. “I didn't know you hadn't told him about your sprained wrist.” 

“You told him?” she groaned. 

“It seemed like a safe topic.” 

Brienne sighed. “You're right. I just...I didn't want to deal with, well.” She glanced over Jaime's shoulder at Selwyn, and when he followed her gaze he could see by the look on the man's face exactly what she meant. 

“Shall I kidnap you for the evening until it all blows over? My room is quite nice, and the bed is large.” 

She reddened almost instantly. “Secret,” she reminded him in a fierce whisper. 

He grinned. “Then I shall have to bid you farewell, my lady.” 

“I miss 'Wrench.'” 

“I'm saving that for when we go back. Tomorrow then? Karting.”

“I look forward to beating you soundly.” 

“I look forward to you trying.” 

“Jaime,” she said quietly as he turned to go, and he searched her eyes and found them more uncertain and scared than he expected. Her father was still a distance away, but she lowered her voice until it was felt more than heard. “You don't have to stay, if you don't want. You can leave at any time and I won't- I won't hold it against you.” 

He couldn't imagine leaving her here on Tarth now that he'd come, now that he knew the softness of her full lips, the tender skin that held such incredible strength. A giant could pick him up and hurl him all the way back to King's Landing and he would swim the Narrow Sea to get to her again.

The weight of that unsettled him, and he simply shrugged. “I have nowhere else to be,” he said, aiming for casual and hitting the mark too well given the way her brow fell and her mouth turned downward. 

“Well if that changes, don't stay for me. I'll be fine.” 

Not trusting himself to not fuck it up further if he said more, Jaime simply nodded and headed back into the night, her wounded eyes following him into sleep.

* * *

Selwyn was thrilled to hear Brienne had made non-work plans again and shooed them out of the house after breakfast with a promise that Jaime would just take her straight home after their fun instead of bringing her back to work. 

“If that's okay with her,” Jaime said, looking to Brienne, and she felt inordinately pleased that he was checking with her instead of acting like he owned her. She was clearly going to have to talk with her dad about his sometimes overbearing acts of love. 

“That will be fine,” she agreed, and then took the frog helmet from Jaime with a laugh. 

“What's that?” her dad asked, his voice suddenly serious. 

“We're going on Jaime's motorcycle.”

“You can take my truck, Endrew is giving me a ride.” 

Brienne gripped the helmet tighter and met her father's stern look. “We don't need the truck, I'll ride with Jaime.” 

“Brienne-”

“You don't get to decide this for me,” she said firmly. “I'm not a child.”

He folded his arms across his broad chest. “You're my child.” 

“I'm also a grown woman. I've done it before and I'll do it again. You can't forbid me from things anymore.” 

The disappointed frown he gave her was only slightly mitigated by his mumbled, “I never could.” Selwyn glanced at Jaime. “I hold you personally responsible for her safety.” 

“Only while she's on the bike. I don't have any better luck telling her to do things than you do,” Jaime said lightly. 

Brienne rolled her eyes and gave her dad a swift hug and kiss goodbye. “It'll be fine. Jaime's an excellent driver, you know that.” In order to avoid Jaime's surely gloating expression, she pulled the neon helmet on and her dad's lips twitched. 

“You sure you want to be seen in that thing?”

“No. But safety first, Dad, you know me.” 

They hurried out of the house and she slid comfortably behind Jaime on the motorcycle, hugging him tightly as he sped off. She loved how his body felt in her arms, how she felt pressed up against him. They'd left early so they could take the long way around Tarth, the road they'd driven last night now unfolding in the sunlight. The sun made the sea sparkle, a million points of light glimmering off one side, while they passed the meadows and occasional towns of Tarth on the other. Brienne wished for a moment they didn't have the helmets, that she could feel the wind in her hair, that she could kiss the back of Jaime's neck when she was so perfectly positioned for it. 

Brienne had picked karting because it had sounded both fun and safe; an activity they could do together without having to be worried about the temptation to be _together_. What she discovered was that no matter what they were doing, at least fifty percent of her thoughts were on Jaime's eternally moving lips. If he wasn't talking, which seemed to be almost never, he was smiling or doing things with his tongue or just generally directing her attention to his mouth with shocking effectiveness. 

They'd gotten suited up and into the karts side-by-side on the first row and Jaime had turned towards her with his beat-up yellow helmet and done this thing with his teeth that she desperately wanted to feel on her skin, and then at lights out he'd leapt forward while she was still recovering. 

After that Brienne had gotten more focused. There weren't other people on the track when they first got there and the bored teenager at his summertime job let them run three races without even having to get out of the karts in-between. Jaime easily won the first race with his cheating start, but though he won the other two as well he had to fight for them, and the third one she was so close to him as they went through the checkered flag that even the teenager whooped in excitement. 

“You two are really good at that,” the boy said as they stood, laughing and taking their helmets off. 

“I've had some practice,” Jaime said wryly and the boy shrugged. 

“Too bad you're not younger, you might be good enough to break into Formula 4.” 

Brienne snorted so loudly she thought she'd hurt herself. “Yes, Jaime, too bad you're not younger.” Jaime had looked at her with such heat in his gaze that she'd wondered if he was actually offended, but what she was discovering now in the locked bathroom was that he had been desperate to kiss her. He had her back against the cold wall, his hands on either side of her head, the barest space between their bodies as he did the thing with his teeth to her neck and slowly drove her mad. 

“Jaime,” she gasped, clutching his waist. But when she tried to drag him against her, to press his length to where she was aching, he went rigid and held himself apart from her still, the strength he always kept tightly controlled shocking her with his resistance. 

“Not done,” he murmured against her neck and then he switched sides, kissing the hollow of her throat on his way, and applied himself to the other side of her neck with the same intensity as the first. 

“We have to get out of the bathroom,” she whispered, digging her fingers into his ass and earning a muffled groan against her skin. 

“Ten more minutes.” He sucked the tender flesh behind her ear and she whimpered. 

“One.”

“Five.”

“Two.” She could feel his smile on her. 

“Deal,” he said, and then he did press against her and she forgot to check the time. 

When she snuck out of the bathroom first, her hair hastily finger-combed, her face splashed with water to ineffectually cool her heated skin, the coast was clear, but when Jaime came out a moment later, she saw the bored teenager staring at them wide-eyed. Jaime gave him a quick wave and Brienne covered her face with her hands. 

“Secret,” she reminded Jaime and he shrugged. 

“Who's the kid gonna tell? He doesn't even know who I am.” 

They walked into the small, beat-up quasi-diner attached to the karting arena and both stopped as they looked at the mural of photos along the bottom of the counter. 

'World Championship Standings!' was printed on a blank sheet of white paper, and then immediately after that on a different sheet was a picture of Jaime, the official F1 bio shot from the website, with '#1' next to it, and then another sheet with Robb Stark and so on for all the rest, all in the current championship order. 

“I guess he doesn't work the food area,” Jaime said dryly. The other bored teenager at the food counter recognized Jaime immediately, though, and she went into shock when the two of them walked up to order food. 

“You're open, right?” Jaime asked and she nodded mutely. “Then I'll have a deluxe Racerburger with fries and the biggest strawberry shake you've got. How about you, Wrench?” he asked, his tone casual. 

“The same but a vanilla shake, please.” 

The girl's eyes were so wide Brienne was afraid they were going to fall out of her head as she entered the order and stared at Jaime. “Is that all?” she squeaked. 

“I don't know, do you want an autograph?” 

She blinked rapidly and then nodded and pulled a napkin out of the nearby dispenser and set it down.

“What's your name, darlin'?” Jaime drawled in his most approachable tone and Brienne barely restrained herself from slugging him for tormenting the poor girl with his excessive charm. Brienne knew if she'd met him when she was a teenager she would have been as gawky and uncontrollably blushing as this girl was. Seven hells, he did it to her now. 

“Alayne,” the girl whispered, as red as the Lannister colors. 

“That's a lovely name. Can you spell it for me? I want to be sure I have it just right for you.” She did, slow and hesitant as though she'd forgotten how while Jaime signed with his name and 'Keep racing, Alayne!' in his big, loopy handwriting. “Save that. It's going to be worth a fortune when I win the championship this year,” he said with a wink and Brienne had to admire the girl for not passing out. 

“Go sit down,” Brienne said, shoving him a little towards a table and pulling out a card to pay. The girl seemed to remember where she was once Jaime had given her some distance and she finished ringing up their order and handed Brienne her receipt and number. When Brienne sat down at the rickety, dirty-topped table, Jaime grinned at her. “Oh stop congratulating yourself,” Brienne said. 

“You can't possibly be jealous, although if you are I'd be happy to take you back to the bathroom to show you there's no need for it.” 

Brienne flushed and kicked his shin when he laughed, though she was smiling, too. “You're going to have to learn to control yourself.” 

“Self-control is overrated,” he purred and she fidgeted in her seat. The man was insufferably attractive. Jaime set his hands on the table and peered at her. “Were there any other boys you ever wanted to kiss in the bathroom here?”

“Gods, no,” she said, scrunching her face in disgust. “They were all immature jerks.”

“So you do have a type,” Jaime said with a wry smile and Brienne burst out laughing. 

They filled up on greasy karting diner food and as they talked Brienne realized that she'd laid her hand next to his, her pinky brushing over his own without even meaning to. He gave her a knowing smirk when she yanked her hand away. 

“Why Renly?” he asked as he slurped up the last of his shake. 

“Why Renly what?”

“I've been staring at his picture over there this whole time and been reminded that he's not that impressive. His driving definitely isn't.” 

“You sound quite jealous,” she murmured and was amused to watch his whole face try to rearrange itself into a mask of schooled indifference. 

“Of Renly? There's no reason to be. I'm just wondering why he turns you into such a blushing schoolgirl when he's around.”

Brienne finished off the last of her hamburger. “He was kind to me,” she said truthfully. “I felt respected, even if the rest of his team didn't share his decent nature.” 

“He didn't even remember you when we saw him at winter testing.” 

“That makes it better. It means how I look didn't even matter to him.”

Jaime looked unsettled by that answer and then frowned. “I respect you.” 

“You called me Wrench and insulted me for weeks,” she said, frowning. 

Jaime had the sense to at least look ashamed. “I wasn't on my best behavior then,” he grudgingly admitted. 

“You're not now either,” she teased him.

“No, I guess I'm not. Shall we go back to the bathrooms then, if I'm to be damned for my misbehavior anyway?”

She threw her last fry at him. “Let's leave before Renly's handsome face makes you behave even worse.” 

“I'm handsome.”

“If you say so,” she said casually, rewarded with his snort of offended disbelief. 

They hurried out just as a big group of twenty-somethings bustled in, chattering and happy. “Hey is that-” one of them said as the door closed behind them. 

“Where to now?” Jaime asked as they got back on the bike. 

“You can take me home,” she said and when Jaime tensed under her hands she realized how that sounded. Brienne had not decided that their secret island romance should extend so far to sex; she needed to know any of this would work between them before she committed to that, no matter how much her body wanted it. “I can show you around the neighborhood,” she added hastily. “You can meet Argella, my neighbor. I don't think even you can charm her.” 

Jaime had smirked a little and pulled his helmet on. “Challenge accepted.”

* * *

Argella stood in Selwyn's front room, arms folded over her chest like an aggressive schoolmarm and stared Jaime down. “So you're the racer,” she said and Brienne looked down and to the side, pressing her lips together hard to keep from giggling. 

“I am,” Jaime said. 

“You don't look like much.” 

Brienne felt Jaime glance at her but couldn't chance meeting his eyes for fear she would lose it entirely. Shoulders trembling she turned and went to the kitchen to get everyone drinks. 

She could still hear them clearly from the kitchen. “You better be nice to her and appreciate her,” Argella said as Brienne got out glasses. “I bet I could hack your email if I needed to.” 

Jaime's response was washed out by the faucet as she filled the glasses with water, but she did hear Argella's response: “Your password is Dayne8, isn't it?”

“Almost done in there, Brienne?” Jaime said, sounding nervous and she grabbed a can of soda for Argella and carried the drinks back into the living room. She handed them out while Jaime looked at Argella with big eyes. 

“Where's your bathroom?” he asked and Brienne pointed him down the hall. 

Argella popped her soda can and snorted. “He's totally changing his password right now,” she said once he'd left. 

“Try not to completely break him with your tech wizardry,” Brienne said mildly. 

“Why not?”

_Because I like him_, Brienne thought, feeling her cheeks redden a little. “He needs to at least finish the season,” she said out loud. 

Jaime returned looking calmer and more at ease. “So do you like racing, Argella?”

“I like watching it. I really like all the high tech parts of it best. Those steering wheels are wild.”

“If you ever want a tour of our facilities, let Brienne know. We'll get you to all the best places.” 

Argella seemed impressed in spite of herself. “Will you let me look at some of the code?”

“Only if you sign an NDA.” 

“We'll see.” But she seemed pleased that he'd taken her request seriously and she lifted her can towards him. “You seem all right. I'm glad Brienne's on your team.”

“So am I,” he murmured, and Brienne could feel his eyes on her like they were caressing her skin. 

“Come on,” she said quickly, “let's talk a walk around the area and then Argella can show you all the things she's engineered.” 

By the time the trio returned to her father's house a couple of hours later, Jaime and Argella were entirely at ease with each other, teasing and chatting like she was his little sister. 

“You can really make someone's refrigerator turn on and off?” Jaime was asking as he held the door open for her. 

“Change the internal temperature, too. It's super easy. Almost none of these internet-connected things let you change the default password, and some of the factories use 'password' as the default password,” she said, sighing loudly. 

Brienne could see Jaime making mental calculations as he considered every internet-connected item in his world. “I should have you come look at my stuff and see if it's secure.” 

“Sure,” Argella said easily. “I need to get back home, but it was nice to meet you. Remember what I said about password managers!” She waved to both of them and trotted down the steps and back across the yard to her house. 

Brienne smiled at Jaime. “You're surprisingly good with kids.” 

“I went through the karting world so fast I was still a kid in places where adults always were. All I ever wanted was to be treated like one of them.” He shrugged. “I try to do the same for kids like that. Besides, she's pretty great.”

“Yeah.” Brienne watched him take his empty glass back into the kitchen and she exhaled shakily. Getting to know Jaime was not making it any easier to resist him in public spaces. She'd almost taken his hand countless times while they toured the neighborhood, Argella running off ahead of them. It had been so calm and domestic that Brienne's heart ached as it snapped back into the present, heavy with longing for something more. 

Jaime came back and gestured at the sea of pictures with his chin. “What's that?”

Brienne felt her cheeks burn. “My dad's. He calls it his brag board.” 

“That's adorable,” he said, sounding amused and sincere in equal measure. He scanned the photos, ending at the one of them at the pool in Lannisport and when he turned to look at her she felt her body tighten under his sharp, hot eyes. “Now what?” he said softly. 

“I don't know.”

He took a step nearer. “Do you live here with your dad?”

“No, I have my own small place out back.” 

“That sounds nice and private.” 

She swallowed. “It is.” 

“It's been killing me to be so near you all day and not able to even touch you.” He was closer still, an arm's length away. “Can I touch you, Brienne?”

“Yes,” she whispered. 

Jaime brushed his fingers up her arm, across her collarbone, and then slid them up behind her neck, and her skin tingled like an electric storm was gathering. “Can I kiss you, Brienne?” he asked with a small smile. 

She licked her lips and nodded and his strong hand tugged against her neck, pulling her into him, into the swirling heat of his desire as he kissed her with unexpected gentleness. He pressed a kiss to each side of her mouth, to the center of it, to the tip of her nose, then warmly to each cheek, like he was mapping her face. She felt treasured and it terrified her. 

She was trembling when he stepped back enough for her to remember where they stood, a patient, discerning look on his face. He took her hands in his and kissed the tops of each. 

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said and Brienne blinked at him, worried that she'd offended him by just standing there unable to even breathe under his ministrations. 

“I'm sorry, I-”

“There's nothing to be sorry about,” he said firmly, squeezing her hands. “If I stay here things are going to progress somewhere you don't seem ready for yet. I'll wait until you're ready.” He kissed her again, the merest hint of how he wanted her, and her knees were weak when he backed away out of reach. “A safer distance,” he said, grinning a little. “Goodbye, Brienne.” 

He sauntered out the door while she stood silently in her dad's living room, feeling like Jaime had dropped a match and left her there ablaze.

* * *

Jaime had had to borrow a loan against his own willpower in order to make himself walk out of Brienne's home, away from her tempting lips and freckled skin, from the feel of her quivering body so near his. He'd walked down to the beach near his hotel and had smoked a cigarette he'd purchased from a nearby quickie mart, and when that hadn't soothed him in the slightest, he'd stroked himself off in the shower until the ache had subsided. But Brienne hadn't been ready, not really; there'd been so much nervous concern in her face when they were finally alone. That first night, when she'd kissed him back, Jaime had felt the mountainous need in her, and he wanted her like that again before they fell into bed together. He couldn't bear her being overcome by regret afterward, not when he wanted her with every pulse of blood in his body. 

So he'd wait. And he'd smoke. And he'd jerk off twice a day if he had to. 

The next morning he woke up to a text from Brienne asking him to meet her at Evenfall track in a few hours. Curious, he got ready quickly and then read more of the Arthur Dayne book to pass the time, speeding out on his motorcycle as soon as was reasonable. 

Evenfall circuit was a solid enough track nestled against the dramatic backdrop of the crumbling walls of Evenfall Hall atop the hill. It seated twenty or thirty thousand spectators but the parking lot was empty except for Selwyn's truck hauling a big trailer when he pulled up. As Jaime came to a stop, Brienne got out of the passenger side of the truck, beaming. 

“Good morning,” she said, and Jaime was only stopped from taking her in his arms to kiss her hello by Selwyn getting out of the driver's side. 

“Morning, Jaime,” Selwyn said. “Have a good night?”

“Good enough. Is that what I think it is?” 

Selwyn's face brightened and he looked ten years younger. “It is indeed. Brienne mentioned you wanted to give it a whirl, and the shop is quiet today so I closed it down. I didn't want to miss this.” He unlocked and opened up the rolling door of the trailer to reveal their personal F1 car waiting inside. “If you're interested, that is.” 

Jaime felt his smile mirroring Brienne's with excitement. “I'd love to,” he said. 

They rolled the car down the small ramp Selwyn provided and through a locked gate Selwyn had the keys to. When Jaime looked curiously at the older man he just shrugged. “Family prerogative,” Selwyn only said with a mysterious smile. 

They got the car in position at p-1 and Brienne ran back for her helmet while Selwyn looked the car over, making sure everything was in place. 

“Brienne tuned her up last week so she should run great,” Selwyn was saying when Brienne came back holding a plain white helmet. 

“Don't you miss the frogs?” Jaime asked slyly. 

She mock glared at him. “Be nice to me or I won't let you go first.” 

Jaime put his helmet on while they got the car started and Brienne moved swift and sure around the car as it rumbled loud on the asphalt. She tucked and pulled, brushed off the side, paused to listen intently to the sound of the engine before finally nodding at him. “She's all yours,” Brienne said and Jaime climbed inside, settled himself in a seat that was just slightly too big for him. It was strange to not feel fully encased and a little compacted by the cockpit as he did in the car that had been built just for him, and the steering wheel was different, but the feel of the engine shuddering through his body was familiar, and so was Brienne looming over him. They had done this many times now, Jaime in his car, Brienne at his side, that it felt like the world was aligned as it should be. 

Brienne pointed out the key buttons for him on the wheel and then she and her dad stepped back, pulling headphones on to drown out the noise and Selwyn pointed at the lights, which were starting to light up. Jaime grinned and pulled his visor down and the world narrowed to just the starting lights, until they went dark and he let the car loose. 

The track was unfamiliar to him – it had been years since he'd run it last in F2 – so he took it slowly for the first three laps, getting familiar with the angle of the curves, the length of the straights, before starting to speed up. He kept an eye out for a checkered flag calling him back but every time he passed Brienne and Selwyn at the pit wall, they were waving the green flag for him to continue. 

The car itself drove like a dream; it didn't have the same speed as his own, lacking the millions of dragons of money Lannister Corp poured into the engine and every minute adjustment to the body, but Brienne had clearly tuned her to handle the limitations of speed, and Jaime loved the way the car responded to his every whim, almost like it knew which he way wanted to go before he did. 

After nineteen laps they showed him the yellow flag, which he took to mean it was time to come back in and he felt, oddly, glad of it. He missed Brienne's voice in his ear as he was driving and it felt wrong to be speeding around a track without her. 

_You're pathetic_, he told himself. 

On the twentieth lap they waved the checkered flag and he did one last slow-down lap before rolling to a stop back at p1. Jaime pulled off his helmet as Brienne nearly bounded up, her eyes wide and excited and a little anxious. 

“What did you think? How'd she run?” she asked, offering a hand to help him up out of the cockpit. 

“You've done great work,” he said, sincere. Brienne flushed with pleasure, her eyes as bright and sparkling as the sapphire sea and Jaime had the sudden urge to make her look like that because of him. 

“She's not as fast as your car, of course.”

“She handles better, though. What have you done to get that smoothness? And why haven't you done it to my car?”

“I suggested it in preseason but the engineers said it wouldn't work with your car.” 

“That's a shame,” Jaime said, frowning a little. He wondered if that were really true, or if they'd just ignored her because she was a woman. He made a mental note to press on it when they were back in King's Landing. 

“I don't think you quite got her up to speed, though,” Brienne said, pulling on her helmet. “Let me show you.” 

Jaime grinned and watched her climb into her car with more ease than when she got in his, her fingers pale and long against the blue of the exterior before she pulled on leather driving gloves. He had the sudden image of pulling them back off her fingers one-by-one, unzipping the jumpsuit she wore and exposing the strong body hiding underneath and he coughed and shifted slightly away from her and Selwyn to hide his extremely untimely reaction. 

The car roared under Brienne's command and he and Selwyn retreated to the wall as the lights went on one at a time and then blinked out and Brienne took off much faster than Jaime had. He watched her avidly as long as he could, the way she seemed much more confident in her own car on this familiar track, how she took the corners nearly perfectly at maximum acceleration, the blue of the car reminding him of her eyes in the sunlight. 

When Brienne had disappeared around the furthest corner he could see, he turned to find Selwyn was looking at him. 

“She's good,” Jaime said.

“She's better than she used to be. You say she's driven some free practice laps for you?”

“Some, yes,” he said, uncertain what Selwyn's solemn tone suggested. 

“There's something different about her.”

Jaime felt sweat spring up at his temples and reviewed his every action since he'd arrived this morning. He hadn't thought Selwyn had seen his slight erection earlier, but perhaps Jaime had been less stealthy than he'd thought. “Is there?” Jaime asked, trying not to sound nervous. 

“Jaime.” Selwyn turned to face him and crossed his arms over his big barrel chest. Jaime had never in his life felt more like a teenager facing a girlfriend's father than in this moment, and Brienne wasn't even his girlfriend. 

Though he wanted her to be, he realized. 

“I know Brienne thinks I meddle too much in her life, but things have not always been easy for her. You understand why I'd be protective, don't you?”

Jaime paused, was relieved to see Brienne coming back into view and they both switched their attention to watch her, Selwyn waving the green flag as she flew by them for her second lap, before he set it down and was back to staring intently at Jaime, not having forgotten his question. 

“I understand why you want to, and I understand why she doesn't want you to,” Jaime finally said, trying to be diplomatic.

Selwyn's broad face twisted with a smirk. It looked out-of-place on his usually kind features. “That's a very bland answer for the Kingslayer.” 

Inhaling slowly, Jaime fought back the instinctive snarl in response. “You are overprotective,” he said. “But I've seen some of what she goes through just in F1, so I get it.” He thought of Connington sprawled on the floor and how good it had felt to let his rage direct his fist. How mad Brienne probably would be if she knew the real reason he had hit the man. 

They heard her coming again and Selwyn waved her on before looking back over his shoulder at Jaime. “I can tell you're watching out for her,” he said, “and I appreciate it. She's never had enough people in her life who would.” 

The other man turned his back on Jaime then and they watched Brienne run the rest of her twenty laps in silence, while Jaime retroactively hated every person who had ever hurt her. 

They took turns off and on for hours, pressing each other to get the fastest lap of the day. Brienne was fastest for awhile, until Jaime got comfortable and familiar enough with the car and the track that his decades of racing experience finally let him pass her. Eventually, as the afternoon sun started its descent, they called it a day, sweaty and satisfied. 

While Selwyn cleaned up and let whoever had been running the lights go, Jaime helped Brienne start rolling the car back to the trailer. 

“How did you get faster all day?” she asked on a half-laugh. “I thought for sure I'd have you beat.” 

“It's all rhythm and feeling. Once you stop thinking about the track and just start feeling it, you drive it better.” 

“How do you stop thinking about it though? I feel like I'll lose control if I shut off my brain.” 

Jaime flicked his gaze briefly to her face, but Brienne was staring with narrowed eyes at the road ahead of them. “You have to trust yourself and your instincts.” 

“I don't have instincts.” 

“I doubt that,” he murmured, his fingers tightening as he thought again of the night he'd arrived here, that kiss on the side of the road. 

“I missed this, you know,” she said after a few quiet seconds. “The track. The work. Less than a year and I already miss it when it's gone.”

“You're addicted. It happens to the best of us.” 

“What happens-” she clamped her mouth shut abruptly.

“After this season ends?” He shrugged, keeping his tone light. “Let's focus on the championship first. If I don't win, I may not be with Lannister Racing next season either.” 

“You can't be serious.”

“You've met my father, right? About so tall, stern face, disdain dripping out of his ass?”

“I just...” they'd reached the trailer and she stood, arching her back to stretch the muscles but also succeeding in dragging all his attention to her small breasts pressing against her jumpsuit. “I don't wish to speak ill of him.”

“I give you permission to speak as ill of him as you want. He's earned it.” 

She chewed her bottom lip and glanced around. “He seems cruel,” she said softly. 

“He is. And when I win the world championship this year, I'll show him, and my sister, and everyone else that I'm not the stupid fuck-up they all think I am,” he added, feeling the rage that always simmered low in his heart boiling up. 

“Oh, Jaime,” Brienne breathed, sounding sad for him. 

Jaime couldn't bear the sympathy in her eyes, was grateful when Selwyn hailed them and kept him from having to. 

“Will you be joining us for dinner tonight?” the elder Tarth asked once they'd gotten the car safely stowed away. 

“No, I'm going to head back to the hotel and have an early evening. Thank you for letting me drive your car, she's a real beauty. I can tell how hard you've both worked.” 

Father and daughter both smiled, mirrored pleased looks on their broad faces. “I'll see you tomorrow, though?” Brienne asked, still tentative and Jaime wondered if she'd ever trust how much he wanted to be near her. But with her dad standing right there he couldn't do more than nod and hold out his hand for a friendly shake. If they gripped each other for a few seconds too long, Selwyn didn't seem to notice. 

Jaime watched them get into the truck, waved when Brienne turned to smile shyly at him from the passenger seat, and then he drove along Tarth's darkening roads until the stars came out to remind him of Brienne, pushing the memories of his father away.


	13. August (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she opened her eyes again Jaime had turned her way, staring at her wide-eyed as though he'd seen one of the Seven themselves. “You're magnificent,” he declared, moving closer. “I don't know whether to kiss you or throw myself at your feet.”
> 
> “I don't want your worship.” Brienne stepped down off the stone until they were a handspan apart, until she could feel his heavy breathing on her face stronger than the wind. His lamplight eyes a promise he would guide her through the sharp rocks of her fears. “I want you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having some writer's block and, oddly, posting seems to often help me write (I think it's the sense that I'm one chapter closer to not having enough chapters written in the backlog, heh), so I'm going to do the counter-intuitive thing and post the final August chapter early this week. At this point I have to admit to myself there is no schedule besides "I promise I will post once a week, but when that is and whether I post more is all up in the air." I hope that doesn't cause y'all too much consternation. I'm really hoping once I get past the section I'm currently stuck on, that the following chapters will flow quickly. I've certainly got them outlined well enough for it. 
> 
> Housekeeping note: I've upped the rating to Explicit. I've been waffling on which way to go for weeks now and decided to err on the side of over-rating vs. under-rating. I also updated the tags to warn for upcoming things that most of you have been expecting for several chapters now. Again, I wasn't sure whether to include those tags from the beginning but I probably should have. 
> 
> FINALLY: my beta, BrynnMcK, she who just today sent me the sweetest, most helpful series of texts while I was dying a slow death of low writing self-esteem, started publishing her (finished) multi-chapter JB fic, [Pilot Light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21825040/chapters/52084957). Chefs! Fake dating! Reality cooking show! I had the privilege of reading it already and you will love it. Her banter is off-the-charts great. She's got it all done and should be posting twice a week. Unlike me, she's reliable.

On Sunday, Brienne woke to the smell of a storm on the air. 

She lay in bed and thought about Jaime, about how they'd gone to see a movie the day before and when her dad had asked her how it was later she couldn't remember a thing because she and Jaime had spent most of it making out in the back row. They hadn't kissed at all on Friday at the track and it felt like they were making up for lost time in the nearly empty theater, Jaime's hands skimming along her thigh and back, her torso twisted to try to reach him with her own hands. Her muscles had not appreciated the awkward curve in the tight seat, but the rest of her body certainly had. 

Still, when the movie had ended and they'd sat there not even holding hands as the few patrons in front of them milled out of the theater, Brienne hadn't been able to invite Jaime back to her bed, or to invite herself over to his. They'd instead gone to another of her favorite restaurants on the island and their talk turned to work and the race at White Harbor in two weeks. Brienne would have preferred making things up about the movie they hadn't seen instead of dancing around the swiftly approaching end of their peaceful rest on Tarth. They would have even less time alone once they were back in the thick of the season, and the world championship was still on the line. No matter Jaime's blithe hand-waving that any sort of secret whatever-this-was would work, he would need focus and so would she if she was going to help him win. How they were going to spend day after day in his office together trying to keep enough space between them _to_ focus was a problem she wasn't sure how to solve and they hadn't even had sex yet. 

The _yet_ weighed heavy. There was time still for her to stop feeling so nervous and afraid thinking about taking that step with Jaime. Not much time, but time nonetheless. 

For today, there was a storm coming, and Brienne pulled out her phone and texted him. 

'When you get up, eat a big breakfast and drink something warm. I've got a plan.'

A minute later he sent, 'Should I be worried?'

'Only if you don't like getting wet.' 

He didn't respond for even longer and she imagined him sitting in his own bed, trying to decide whether to make some innuendo-laden reply. 'What time should I come over?'

'I'll pick you up.' She peeked out the window and judged the shape and darkness of the clouds, glanced at the clock to see the current time. '10:30'

'It's a date'

Her cheeks reddened but she beamed happily at her phone and sent him a smiling emoji before following her own advice. 

When she stopped in front of the Lighthouse Inn at 10:30am sharp, he emerged from the lobby just as fat raindrops started to fall. Jaime held a cozy-looking, thick brown jacket under his arm and wore a deep green t-shirt that made his eyes glow. His black jeans clung with just enough tightness to his hips and thighs that Brienne caught a woman staring appreciatively at him as she headed into the lobby. The look on the woman's face had to be the same one Brienne was wearing, watching Jaime approach looking like he'd come from a Hottest Drivers of F1 photo shoot. Jaime didn't seem to even notice the other woman or her attention though, his eyes only for Brienne as he climbed into the truck and brushed his hand over his golden, slightly damp hair and smiled at her. Her world settled and sparked at the same time, a dizzying swirl of comfort and anticipation. 

“So what's this mysterious plan?” he asked, buckling up and resting back in the seat. 

“Do you remember how I told you about how my dad used to take Gal and I up to Evenfall Hill during storms?”

Jaime looked out the window at the angry gray clouds overhead; the rain was still falling slow but steady and the ground was already wet. “I was afraid you'd say that.” 

“Scared, Lannister?”

“Not when I've got you to protect me, Wrench.” 

She shot him a small grin and drove the quickest route to the hill, not wanting to miss the heart of the storm. Her blood was already singing in anticipation of the wildness of nature roaring through her, of sharing that with Jaime. Back in Gulltown she hadn't fully trusted that he wouldn't just mock her for wanting to be inside the storm, to feel the rain pouring down on her skin like a welcome caress. But now everything between them was different, a push-pull of friendship and attraction that left her as breathless and tingling as if she'd been struck by lightning. 

They were quiet on the drive, Brienne focused on the road as the rain turned heavier, Jaime staring out at the storm and keeping his own thoughts to himself. His silence was very loud. The winding drive up Evenfall Hill was familiar under the truck's tires and Brienne let memory lead them confidently up to an empty parking lot at the trailhead to the top. There were only a few short, scrubby trees up here, the rest having been cleared away ages ago, but they already swayed in the growing winds and she saw Jaime stare at them, his brow creased with worry. 

“I won't let you get hurt,” Brienne said firmly and he turned to search her eyes for reassurance, his face warming with pride. 

“I believe you could even hold back nature itself,” he murmured, her cheeks reddening under his appreciative stare. Jaime winked and opened his door and the wind rushed in, cold and restless. They both pulled on their jackets and stepped out into the growing storm. 

“At least we'll be alone,” he called over the top of the truck. She left the truck unlocked and zipped up her jacket before gesturing for him to follow her down the trail, and he hurried after and took her hand with a quick squeeze. It was a short walk at a slight elevation and Brienne breathed in deep of the familiar smells from her childhood. Though her father had stopped bringing her here after Galladon's death, Brienne had come back on her own as soon as she could legally drive herself. How many lonely days she had walked this uneven trail that curved around the ruins of Evenfall and deposited them in a meadow at the furthest edge of the hilltop. Bringing Jaime here now as the clouds continued to gather made her heart pound as fast and heavy as the rain. If he made fun of it, of her, she wasn't sure what she would do. 

But when they hit the highest point, Jaime gasped aloud and breathed, “by the gods” at the sight and she felt weak-kneed with relief. 

The top of Evenfall Hill was slightly higher than the tower at Morne, which was hidden in the distance behind the stone walls of the Hall at their backs. The spot she led them to looked out towards the northwest from where the storm had rolled in deep gray and thick as smoke above them. She'd watched other storms come in from here, long shelves of menacing darkness, and she'd imagined herself a warrior facing down an oncoming army of snarling undead, resolute and unafraid. It was almost funny how the wind howling over the hill filled her with so much less fear than Jaime whispering in her ear. 

At their feet now the towns and roads of Tarth soaked in the rain, but it was the wild and white-capped sea fighting and lashing upward at the sky that captured the immense ferocity that surrounded them. A shipbreaking sea, they called it in the docks, and woe to anyone who dared to venture out into its raking claws. In the distance a lighthouse burned through the sheeting rain, a reminder that there was always someone keeping the light on in case a lost soul needed it even in the most fearsome storms. 

“Brienne,” Jaime said, barely audible above the wind. He released her hand and strode to the edge of the meadow where it dropped at a steep slope back down the hill. “This is incredible.” 

Standing at the edge of the hill, soaked through with the rain, the wind buffeting hard against his coat, Jaime looked as tall and bright as the lighthouse below. Brienne's body ached to see him here in this place of her heart, facing down the storm, filling her with a heat stronger than the chill. 

With his back to her she took the moment to climb atop the low, flat rock nearby from which she'd faced many storms, closed her eyes, and held her arms out to the tempest, welcoming it in. The rains of Tarth were strong, beating against her skin and upturned head. Cold as they were, though, they couldn't dull the steadily growing need inside of her. She felt strengthened by the storm, implacable, her big body driving through the seas by sheer force of her will. What she willed was growing louder in her with every beat of her heart. 

When she opened her eyes again Jaime had turned her way, staring at her wide-eyed as though he'd seen one of the Seven themselves. “You're magnificent,” he declared, moving closer. “I don't know whether to kiss you or throw myself at your feet.”

“I don't want your worship.” Brienne stepped down off the stone until they were a handspan apart, until she could feel his heavy breathing on her face stronger than the wind. His lamplight eyes a promise he would guide her through the sharp rocks of her fears. “I want you.” 

They moved into each other at the same time, kissing as fiercely as the storm that swirled and wailed around them. Thunder rumbled loudly overhead and they broke apart, chests heaving. Brienne led them quickly and silently back down the path to the truck, pushing him hard against it to kiss him hungrily, Jaime's hands clenching in her hair. 

He mouthed the side of her neck, his mouth a furnace against the cold of the rain, and then whispered, “what now?” hot into her ear. 

There was no doubt this time, no thinking, just instinct as natural and untamed as the storm as she threw open the door and climbed inside the truck to lie down along the bench seat, pulling Jaime in after her. They both pulled off their jackets and then Jaime shut the door, sealing them inside. 

The cab of the truck was just big enough for the two of them like this, Jaime frantically undoing her jeans and groaning as he tugged them down her legs, his groan turning to laughter as they both had to wrestle to get them off. 

“Your legs are too gods-damned long,” he muttered, sounding entranced by the fact, not annoyed, and quickly her shoes and pants and underwear were lying in a soggy heap on the floor of the footwell. He looked at her exposed before him as he'd looked at the fierce wildness of Tarth in the meadow. His fingers traveled back up the length of her legs, and when Jaime pressed the heel of his hand against her center, Brienne's laughter died in her throat and she gasped as though he'd shocked her, her body buzzing, her legs clenching tightly against his hips to pull him nearer. Even when she'd touched herself while imagining him it had never felt like this, a rogue wave of need she could only crash though, not climb over.

“Please,” she begged, grabbing at his shirt, at the waist of his jeans, and he kissed her hard before pulling away a little. He tossed his wallet onto her chest and then started working at his own pants. 

“Condom,” he growled and she nodded and hurriedly went through the wallet with fingers chilled and trembling from the rain and the feel of Jaime's body pressing her down into the seat. She barely registered expensive-looking, shiny credit cards, his license, an old photo of a pretty woman holding two babies in her arms before Brienne's fingers closed around the square foil of a condom. Or, she discovered as she pulled out the strip and threw the wallet on the floor, six condoms. 

She held it up as Jaime finally kicked his own pants off and his cock pressed blunt against her thigh, hard and scalding against her cold skin, leaving a smear of heat between the raindrops. 

“Feeling lucky?” she asked, breathless with desire as he rubbed his thumbs over her hipbones, his long fingers curling around her ass. 

“I wanted to be prepared,” he explained, just as breathless as she was. “Besides,” he said, leaning down enough that his cock nestled heavy between her legs and she could only gasp at the sensation, “I knew when you were ready, once wouldn't be enough.” He plucked the condoms from her hand and she watched him open one and roll it on in a smooth movement, the sight of his long-fingered hands holding himself making her yearn for him with a desperation that matched the wind battering the truck, trying to get in. 

Jaime kissed her tender and slow, like that was all he intended to do for awhile but Brienne wanted him inside her more than air in that moment, and she bit at his lip, swiped her tongue in his mouth when it opened on a moan. His hands tightened on her skin but still he slipped almost tentatively inside her until she surged against him, demanding more, and for once he didn't argue he just thrust fully into her while they both shuddered at the pulse of him deep within. The feel of Jaime enveloped and overwhelmed her, more intense than the storm outside, louder than the rain pounding the metal roof above them. She'd wanted this for so many weeks and it was still almost more than she could bear. 

No storm could compete with Jaime sliding wild and wanting in and out of her, his mouth fused to her own, their wet bodies burning and crashing like lightning, like cars bottoming out on the track to send sparks flying. She had been so afraid of what this moment might do and she trembled on the edge with that fear, that his strength and his gentleness combined, his open hunger for her, were too much for her heart to resist. Jaime's hand slid between them to rub between her slick folds, his eyes drinking her in. She shut her own and turned her head aside. 

“Don't turn away from me,” he said, a murmured plea, and she opened her eyes, a doomed ship ready to throw herself against the rocks for the lure of something golden. His stare wasn't warm now; it was bright and hot as the sun, burning away the last of her fear. There was nowhere in the truck she could hide from the wash of his light, revealing every part of her. Not that it mattered: it was already his anyway. Brienne arched her hips up to pull him in deeper and Jaime made a strangled noise in his throat and gripped her tighter, pushing in until their bodies were one and her release struck as loud and shocking as thunder as it erupted all through her with the desperation of a shipwreck, one hand pressed up against the cold glass of the window, the other twisted in his shirt. A moment later his orgasm struck as hard and fast as her own and he stuttered helplessly against her, curse words and her name falling from his lips like sunbeams on her skin. 

Jaime uttered one last, loud moan and then slumped against her and Brienne wrapped her arms around him to hold him there, his weight an anchor that tethered her to the world while the aftershocks quivered through them both. She stared up at the ceiling of the truck and gulped down air and the waves subsided, leaving her safely ashore. Their chests moved in time as they panted and calmed, both of them slick with sweat and rain. Brienne hadn't been a virgin before this, but she may as well have been for how entirely different it had been with Jaime. She felt like the first tender shoot blossoming in a meadow that had been burned to ash. Her feet were tucked around Jaime's calves, one up on the seat, one down in the footwell, and she was stretched and sated and full until he shifted and slipped out of her.

“I should take the condom off,” he mumbled into her neck and Brienne boldly rubbed her fingers under the shirt plastered to his muscled back. She'd burned to feel the ridges and planes of him for months now, and it thrilled her to be able to do so, to have him almost purr under her touch. He seemed satisfied as he nuzzled into her shoulder. 

Her own back was starting to ache from the seatbelt buckle poking into it, so she kissed his temple and gently tugged his chin up to look at her, struck silent for a moment at the adoration all over his face when he did. 

“You looked like one of the old gods made flesh,” he murmured, kissing the tip of her nose. “Even if there had been people around I wouldn't have been able to resist you.” 

Brienne blushed, and she watched his eyes travel down her neck to her shirt, where he tugged the collar down and grinned happily. 

“I knew it,” he said, looking at her reddening chest, and Brienne snorted and pushed him gently off of her, feeling awkwardness creep in again now that the passion had tapered off. The storm had, too, and while she wrangled her body into her wet underwear and jeans, grunting when the fabric stuck and clung to every inch of skin, the rain turned to a gentle pattering against the window. 

Once they were both dressed again, Jaime kissed her softly and then pulled away just enough to be able to meet her eyes. “The storm is over and my hotel bed is a lot more comfortable than this,” he said. “More private, too. If you're free.” He sounded uncertain in a way she'd never heard him before and her heart wobbled unsteadily inside of her. 

Brienne touched her fingertips to his chin, his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss them in a gesture somehow more intimate than the sex they'd just had. 

“I don't have any other plans,” she said, smiling a little, and then, feeling emboldened by the storm and the memory of him desperate inside of her she added, “besides, I'd hate for you to have wasted your money on these.” She waggled the discarded strip of condoms at him. For a moment she thought he would swarm her again right there, and she would have let him, but he took the condoms from her fingers and tucked them into the pocket of her jeans. 

“We don't want to be wasteful,” he agreed in a low, knowing tone. They both buckled up and Jaime kept his palm heavy and hot on her leg the entire, not-fast-enough drive back to the Lighthouse Inn.

* * *

Jaime felt like he was flying as Brienne drove them quickly back to his room. It wasn't the speed or the slick roads that caused it though, it was the memory of her flushed and panting underneath him, her unbelievable strength both as she'd pulled him into her to begin and held him close after they were done. He had come to Tarth for her and she'd given him everything he wanted and more and he would never forget the way she'd seemed made of the storm itself at the top of the hill, or of the soft, happy look on her face when he kissed her fingertips and invited her back to his bed. 

_Fuck_, he thought, squeezing her thigh and earning one of those shy, pleased smiles as they neared the Lighthouse Inn. Jaime had had sex with a few people, but he'd never felt as moved by it in the way he did now as he stared at Brienne, memorizing every freckle, every awkward, beloved line of her face. He would do whatever it took to keep that joy shining bright beneath her rough, pale skin.

This had, perhaps, been a mistake. Good sex – great sex, indescribable sex – wouldn't change why Brienne had wanted to keep things quiet in the first place, but it would make keeping things quiet even more difficult. He wanted to take out a front page ad in every paper in Westeros claiming Brienne for his own and he didn't even know if she would want to keep this up when they got back to King's Landing. Jaime promised himself he would ask, but not for a few days. They still had time to enjoy on Tarth and he'd rather live with the uncertainty than press his luck. Besides they were parked now and Brienne was looking at him, her blue eyes nearly black with desire and Jaime realized that though he wasn't a young man anymore, it wouldn't matter today. He pressed a kiss to her palm and slid out of the truck, fumbling for his keycard. 

There was no one around, bless every god old and new, as Jaime led Brienne to his room, kissing her every few steps until he opened the door and nearly dragged her inside. Since he'd dropped his luggage in the closet he'd thought of little else but having her here: the bed he'd wanted to see her stretched out on, the small desk with the Dayne book he'd earmarked passages to talk to her about, the small gas fireplace he'd imagined using as the only light to explore her naked body. He turned it on full now before facing Brienne. 

Her freckled skin was pink and she was shivering, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her hair plastered to her head. He couldn't believe he'd ever thought her ugly; he'd never wanted someone more than when she chewed her lip and glanced shyly at him from under her pale wet lashes. She had been a force of nature on the hill, but here with her hair tucked messily behind one ear, dripping and uneasy under his steady gaze, Jaime was stunned by the weighty, raucous beat of his heart.

Jaime cleared his throat and peeled her arms away from her body, her shirt off of her entirely. “Let me warm you,” he whispered against her shoulder as he stepped around behind her and undid her plain white bra. It slid to the floor with a sound like a sigh, echoed by Brienne as he ran his hands down her arms, over her waist and up to cover her small breasts fully with his hands. She leaned back against him and yelped a little. 

“Your shirt is cold,” she said, laughing. 

Jaime removed his hands only long enough to take off and throw away his own shirt and then he pulled her wide, firm body back against his, skin-to-skin, stroking and pulling at her nipples and kissing the corded tendon and muscle that formed the perfect curve of her neck. He could feel the vibration of her low moan with his lips. In the truck, surrounded by the cacophony of the storm and his own rushing blood, he hadn't been able to hear the quiet noises she made, whimpers and wordless pleas that reverberated through him now and made him ache for more. He kissed along the strong line of her shoulders, covering the constellations of freckles with his mouth. Even back in the sauna when they'd both hated him in equal measure, Jaime had wanted to use his tongue to trace a path through the hundred small stars on her back. 

When she was arched and gasping in his arms, Jaime slid one hand down over the plane of her stomach, stopping at her abdomen. _Oh_, he thought with sudden delight, _she has a belly button_. He felt silly for a moment – of course she would, she wasn't a clone – but he'd never seen it before and the dip of her belly was so soft in the firm muscle that he was briefly transfixed, brushing his fingers repeatedly over it until she nudged away his probing hands. It was just like Brienne herself; the softness of her heart surrounded by the hard wall she'd built to protect it. A wall she was willing to let him through as he turned her in his arms and kissed her deeply. 

“Bed,” he directed, and then for the second time that day he helped her out of her pants and underwear before divesting himself of his own, gratified by the way she greedily eyed his already hard cock, her trembling shyness from the first time at least temporarily discarded. He stroked himself while she watched and licked her lips, her body shifting restlessly. The cramped interior of the truck had cocooned them before, a safe haven momentarily outside of time, but he liked this space better for giving him a full view of her, especially her legs long as a summer's day. He wanted to see them on the silk sheets of his apartment, on the plain cotton sheets he'd spotted in hers. He wondered for a moment if he could talk her into closing the blinds of his office, locking the door, and recreating the first time he'd been up close to her legs back in January, except this time he wouldn't leave her there untouched in his chair. 

Jaime exhaled, his control shaky, the edge of his desire and shocked elation barely dulled by their first round in the truck, and he knelt at the end of the bed with his hands on her knees, spreading them wide. She was so wet already, eager for him again when he wasn't even sure why she liked him most days. Having her here with eyes as clear and blue as the sky after a storm, it felt almost too much; an unearned gift he was afraid he'd have to return. But she _was_ here with him after he'd dreamed of her for so long; she'd chosen to be not once but twice, with nothing to convince her but his grasping, bottomless need. Jaime would not give her reason to regret it. 

He settled with his head between her thighs and used tongue and teeth on her center, lapping up her sweet and salty musk with a heavy groan, his fingers keeping steady time inside her until she was crying out his name – and he knew he'd always hear the echo of this moment when she said it in the future. His shoulders were compacted between her legs, his hair pulled tight by her hands, his nose soaked and buried in the blonde hair at her juncture, but he only stopped when she was shuddering, digging her heel into his arm to push him back. Jaime lifted his eyes to her face and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth like a man who had enjoyed a gourmet meal, her patchy, deep-red flush going darker when she met his stare across the expanse of her own endless body. 

He crawled up that long, muscled plain to tenderly kiss her, and she hummed under his lips, her tongue sweetly darting out and tasting herself in his mouth. Every man that had ever passed this up had been an idiot, Jaime thought. For all his many flaws, at least he was here, the fire's heat at his back, Brienne's heat at his front. 

“My turn,” she said and he felt a tremor of want almost painful in its intensity as she sat up and maneuvered him so he was sitting back against the wall. She barely fit in-between his legs and he grabbed her wrists, yanking her against him to kiss her soundly. 

“I'd rather put those condoms to use,” he said into her mouth, feeling her thick lips smile against his. 

“I'd rather put my mouth to use,” she whispered back, flushing and barely meeting his eyes as she spoke, and he groaned loud and long against her skin when her hand moved rough up and down his length. 

He stilled her with a firm grip, gasping “I won't last” when she pulled away a little, looking worried. “Brienne, I can't-” he kissed her, ferocious, and touched his forehead to hers. “I want this to last and it won't if you do that.” 

She smiled with a hint of wickedness he could never have imagined her capable of, and he knew he'd do whatever she wanted in that moment, no matter how fast and potentially embarrassing to his reputation it might be. But instead she reached over to the condoms she'd smartly set at the bedside table and opened one, awkwardly putting it on him under his panting direction. Brienne had clearly never done this before and she squeezed and tugged his cock as she rolled the condom on, her tongue trapped between her teeth in concentration, and by the time she was done Jaime's hands were fisted so hard in the sheets his fingers hurt and he had to take a few steadying breaths while she watched him. 

“Are you ready for this?” she asked, an echo of what he always asked her on the track, never realizing what it meant to have someone ask it of him. 

Jaime nodded and pulled her towards him, positioning her knees on either side of his hips and she sank down onto him while he cursed deep and low in his chest and her passionate moan harmonized underneath. The rest was all sensation: the sound of her wet heat around him, the unrelenting blue of her eyes occasionally fluttering closed, the powerful grip of her hands on his shoulders as she held him in place when he came apart inside her with his neck arched backward, his head pressed hard into the wall. Only when he sank back onto the bed did she slow and still and curl into his chest like he could comfort her; a ridiculous lie when it was always her who soothed him. But for this moment he would not let her down. He wrapped his arms around her broad back, buried his head into her neck, and wished that this week would never end.

* * *

They re-settled themselves under the covers, Brienne scooting down a little extra to lay her head on Jaime's chest so she could hear his heart beating like a lullaby in her ear, his toes touching the tops of her feet below them. 

She wanted to look at Jaime but was too nervous to do so, even though he'd given her no reason to believe he was anything but content, one hand rubbing small circles along her arm, his other hand covering hers against his stomach where she lightly ran her fingers over the trail of hair there. _Not every man is Connington_ she reminded herself. _Jaime least of all._ There were no men like Jaime, she was starting to believe; his unique alchemy of advantage and adversity, sarcasm and sweetness impossible to replicate anywhere else. Her fingers curled a little into his skin, holding him tight. 

As the silence stretched between them, Brienne wondered what people usually said after sex. In her previous experience the silence had lasted only as long as it had taken her to shuffle out of her fellow student's dorm room, never to return. Here, with a warm fire and warmer man, she had no urge to leave Jaime's room or even his bed, and he seemed to be slowly falling asleep under her. The quiet wasn't uncomfortable, but for the two of them to not talk for so long in any situation was unusual; after all that had just occurred even more. She'd thought Jaime, at least, would have had something to say. 

Brienne shifted her head a little to peer up at him, traced with her eyes the sharp line of his jaw, the point of his nose. He lifted his head to look back down at her, smiling with a tenderness that sent her heart into a skid. In the storm she'd felt brave, their attraction unstoppable; when he'd pulled her into this room she'd felt desired; here in the aftermath of it all, when the quiet sunlight peeking through clouds and curtains allowed no hiding, he was looking at her like she was something to be cherished and Brienne had to look away again to blink back her sudden tears. She inhaled deeply, cursing the way it shuddered a little through her lungs. 

Jaime's hand stilled on her arm. “Everything okay?” he asked and she could hear the hesitance and concern in his tone. 

“Yes. I just-” Brienne bit her lip and then pushed herself up on her elbow to look down at him. She had thought him handsome before, but ruffled and relaxed like this, his long, golden body nestled in white sheets, he was stunning. And he was hers, if only for a few more days. “Everything's great,” she said, meaning it in the moment. 

His smile was so big the sun itself seemed to pour out of him and he lifted up enough to kiss her chin. “Good, because I wasn't planning on anyone leaving this room for at least the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours.” 

“Jaime,” she laughed. “I can't just not go home.”

“Call your dad and tell him we took a boat out that broke down in the middle of the ocean and you'll be back tomorrow.” On her skeptical look he shrugged. “Tell him the truth then. What does it matter if he knows? What does it matter if anyone knows?”

“The first woman F1 race engineer having sex with her driver? You're right I'm sure no one will care about that at all.” 

He frowned and she ran her fingers over his wrinkled brow. “I told you I don't care if that's all they ask about.”

“That's not all they'll ask about and you know it,” she said, quiet and firm. “The secret part of this is the most important part.” 

Jaime tensed beneath her. “I thought the part between us was the most important part.”

Brienne's stomach rolled over and she sat up on her knees, folding her arms over herself. She wished they weren't naked for this conversation. “You know what I mean. You're being obstinate.” 

“I'm not the one who won't listen to reason.”

“Reason? Let's play this all the way through, then, if you're such a fan of reason.” He sat up, mirroring her by crossing his own arms. Brienne wanted to hold him, but he had to see what she did. “We start by telling my dad and he's, I don't know, happy maybe. Maybe he's annoyed. Maybe he worries you took advantage of my inexperience.” 

“But I-”

“Let me finish. Best case, he wishes us well and we have a lovely break. Then we go back to King's Landing together at the end of the week. We show up at work together on Monday. We kiss in front of the Lannister Racing offices and Kevan sees us. Or even better, your father. Either way Tywin will find out. What happens then? I get to keep my job? More likely he fires me before sunset.” 

Jaime's face darkened like the storming sky. “I'd quit first,” he ground out between clenched teeth. 

“And ruin your shot at the World Championship? What good would that do? He wouldn't keep me if you left.”

“I couldn't stay if I'm the one that got you fired.”

Brienne sighed, resigned. “Best case he's pissed at both of us but we get to keep working while he throws even more of the team's weight behind Lancel. What will your pit crew think? Bronn and Podrick and Lucion should be fine but does Willem suddenly rethink working with me? Do the others? Are you down a man, two, ten by the time it's all done? Where do we get more pit crew to replace them? Of course then the gossip gets out and the media start to call. They put out puff pieces, attack pieces, endless requests for interviews-”

“I get it,” he muttered. 

“I haven't even gotten to the other teams or the fans yet. It only gets worse from here.”

“It's enough,” he snapped. “I get it.” They glared at each other before Jaime exhaled loudly and looked away. “I get it,” he repeated, his voice dull. “So what do we do?”

Though it felt terrifying to let herself go from her own safe embrace, Brienne unfolded her arms and unwound his, twining their fingers together. “We started down this path, so we either go back to where we were or we keep going.”

“In secret.”

“In secret,” she agreed.

“When the season is over-”

“We'll see,” she interrupted, and he pursed his lips. “Let's just get through this season first.”

Jaime tugged her and she nearly fell into his solid chest. He kissed her hard, biting at her lip, his hands slipping free to tangle in her hair, tilting her head to devour her mouth. He was not the steady lighthouse now; he was the tsunami that would swallow her whole. “I don't want to go back to not having this,” he breathed against her after he broke away, his arms banding around her body. 

“We should have had this discussion sooner.”

“We did, I just ignored it.” 

Brienne smiled a little, pressed a kiss to his neck, salty with dried sweat. “Just like you ignore when I tell you to box, why am I not surprised?”

He snorted and she felt it against her chest. “No work conversations while we're naked.” 

“Afraid that I'll seduce you into a strategy you don't like?”

“That's exactly what I think.” 

She laughed and shook her head and he urged her around so she sat against him, her head leaned back on his shoulder, his cock soft but twitching against the curve of her ass. “Do you think we'll regret this?” she asked quietly, needing to know even if it hurt. 

“No,” he said simply, kissing her hair. “Do you?”

She rewound the last few days and what it would have been like if she hadn't kissed him back that first night. Simpler, perhaps; he probably would have gone back to King's Landing the next day and left her safe but filled with regret anyway. “No. But even if we do it's better to regret something we did then something we missed.” Galladon had been the one to teach her that, though after his death – and only reinforced by Griffin – it had seemed misguided advice. 

“Spoken like a Lannister,” Jaime smirked. 

“Like a Tarth,” she responded and he squeezed her with his legs. His hands rubbed down her arms and then came to a stop where the dip of her hips would be if she were like other women. Brienne flushed a little, waiting for his shocked retreat, but Jaime seemed incapable of noticing her physical flaws. 

Or perhaps, she tentatively mused as he nuzzled her ear, he just didn't care. Not like all the others did. Not like Red Ronnet, who'd thought her so ugly he couldn't even ask her out as a joke. 

“Did you punch Connington because of me?” she asked abruptly. Jaime's fingers curled against her sides, his breath a puff of surprise in her hair. 

“It doesn't matter why I did it.”

“It does to me.” 

“Why?”

What was one more secret when he'd already seen so much of her? She told him, in a steady voice, about what had happened during her two months at Griffin, from the first week of snide comments to the final moments of painful laughter. Brienne did not leave anything out, and she did not cry. 

Jaime was quiet, but as she talked she could feel the anger trembling in him through her skin. 

“I should have done more,” was all he said when she finished. He moved from behind her to in front and the line of his brow was dark and intense before he disappeared between her legs again, his mouth and fingers relentless until she was hoarse and weak with pleasure. Then when she was limp, her thighs slick with their sweat and his spit and her own wetness, he fucked her slowly, whispering everything he wanted to do to her like a promise, and Ronnet Connington's cruel smile faded into a distant, painless memory.

* * *

The next day Jaime woke up alone in the bed they'd spent most of Sunday in, still smelling Brienne on the sheets. 

After her story he had been desperate for some way to fix what those assholes had done, but since he had no way to go back and change the past he spent dedicated time changing her present, trying to show her how much he wanted her for who she was: her height, her strength, her serious face and mesmerizing blue eyes. They'd fallen asleep in each other's arms after he'd exhausted them both, and then hours later he'd woken her up again by teasing her nipple into his mouth. 

By the time she left late at night, they'd gone through four of the six condoms and one and a half large pizzas and Jaime was already planning what to do with the rest of both. 

He reached for his phone and smiled to see a new message from Brienne: 'Good morning.'

'Morning' he sent back. 'Feeling sore?'

She responded with a frowny-face emoji and he laughed in the empty room. Shortly after she sent another text. 'Dad's noticing how much time we've spent together; I need to spend the day with him'

Jaime hrmphed. 'I was hoping we could spend the day together'

'Maybe tomorrow'

“_Maybe_ tomorrow?” he said out loud. How was he supposed to not see her until tomorrow? Or longer? They only had a few days left before they had to return, and he knew she'd want him to go back before she did. 'What about dinner tonight?' he sent her. 

'No. Go explore the island. Do tourist things. That's why you came.' 

It wasn't even close to why he'd come, but he left the lie. 'If I have to'

'You do'

“Spoilsport,” he muttered. He shouldn't begrudge her spending time with her father when Selwyn was actually a decent man, but he did. 

He considered lying in bed all day and just reading the Dayne book, but decided to do as Brienne had bid and instead got to know more of the island that was her home. Post-storm, the air was even more crisp and clear than it had been before, the waters a blue so deep they looked painted on, and every meadow he passed on his bike glimmered with raindrops in the sunlight. Jaime had been to tracks and garages all over the world, places he loved and had lingered at when he could, but nothing had filled him with the same breathtaking awe as the view from Evenfall Hill, or the waterfall he discovered on one of the shorter valley hikes. It was an easy island to fall in love with; the open, curving roads perfect for his bike, the people stoically kind. If anyone he met on his day-long adventure knew who he was, they left him alone. 

No wonder Brienne had immediately come home for the break. Her father, the neighbor girl, the smell of fragrant summer flowers on the breeze – she must have missed them all terribly so far from home, stuck in the lion's den with him. 

Jaime climbed back up out of the valley and drank the last of the bottled water he'd bought. The sun was finally setting and he'd spent the entire day on his own, not thinking directly about Brienne but her presence hovering nonetheless. He'd almost texted her a dozen times, resisted doing so yet again and instead went to House of Fish to have an entire bowl of the chowder. Arryk was there and he greeted Jaime with a much friendlier smile, seated him at a small table by the window so Jaime could watch the stars appear while he ate. 

He finished his meal, left Arryk another huge tip, and started up his motorcycle, and only then did Jaime let himself think about Brienne naked and flushed because of him. He checked his watch – just after nine pm. The long way around the island would take him a couple of hours in the dark; if he drove that he could arrive at Brienne's neighborhood at a time when Selwyn would surely be asleep, leaving Brienne alone in her little house. 

_I should text her_, he thought, except that would give her a chance to be sensible about this and that wouldn't do either of them any good, so he stuck to his plan and as the clock hit 11:02, Jaime was walking his bike up to the side of her house instead of driving it, like he was some sort of hooligan come to seduce Selwyn's daughter; which he supposed he was, he thought with a grin. Jaime knocked on her door in the dark. He heard the faint crash of waves until Brienne's distinct, heavy footsteps drowned them out. 

The porch light came on and Jaime winced at the sudden brightness. She was going to be annoyed, he thought, but he didn't care when she opened the door and he took her in: blond hair mussed and clearly pressed down with hasty hands, an old t-shirt with a hole in the arm, and sweat pants that had been cut into shorts that barely skimmed the tops of her thighs. She didn't look annoyed, she looked worried, and though she reached out to touch his arm he felt like her fingers had grabbed his heart. 

“Jaime. Is everything ok?”

The snarky response he'd prepared died in his throat. “I had to see you,” he said on a shrug. 

Now she did look annoyed and he leaned forward to kiss it away, her lips opening on a soft sigh under his. “You have to be quiet,” she warned him when he pulled away. 

“As a mouse,” he promised, running his fingers along the soft skin just under the hem of her shorts.

“And you have to leave before morning,” she added, gasping a little. 

“Then we better get started,” he murmured, crowding her back into the dark house and shutting the door behind them.

* * *

Jaime kissed Brienne goodbye again as the pale light of dawn peeked over the horizon. “Will I see you today?” he asked, trying not to sound desperate. 

“You're seeing me now,” she grinned. If she'd looked messy when he woke her, she looked downright disheveled after their night together, her thick lips red from kissing him, her shirt on backwards, hair a tangled nest. He probably didn't look much better, though at least he'd gotten his clothes on the right way. 

“Stubborn,” he said into the curve where her neck met her chin. 

“Annoying,” she breathed into the soft skin behind his ear. 

He slipped his hand under her shirt and around her waist and she moaned low and then gently put her hands on his chest, holding him still. 

“Meet me at the top of the Hill this evening,” she said. “We can watch the sunset from there. I'll bring a picnic.”

“I'll bring wine.” 

“That's too romantic, there will be people there. Bring water.” Brienne kissed him soft and sweet, still holding him at bay, and then nudged him away. “My dad is an early riser, you better get going.” 

He smiled, rueful, but nodded and took a few steps, glancing back over his shoulder to find her leaning her head against the door, watching him with a small smile. “Sunset,” he told her. 

“Sunset.” She shook her head a little and then shut the door, watching him until it had closed completely. 

Jaime walked his motorcycle back down to the main road and turned his phone back on on the way. There were five calls from Tyrion and a voicemail suggesting Jaime call at any time. Nerves sparking, Jaime dialed his brother while he watched the sky lighten behind the houses. 

After three rings Tyrion picked up. “Why the fuck are you calling me before six am?”

“You told me to! You said any time.” 

“I didn't mean at the crack of dawn,” his brother groused in a thick, rough voice. “Where are you?”

“On vacation.” 

Tyrion made a rude noise. “No shit. Father keeps asking about you, wondering where you are, if you're with 'that big woman' as he so delicately calls her.”

“Father has my number, he's welcome to call.”

“He wants the answers to magically appear in front of him.”

“And today you're playing the role of his loyal wizard.”

“I'm more a court jester, Jaime, you know that,” Tyrion threw back, though he sounded hurt. “I thought you'd want to know that he's been sniffing around. Varys showed him a photo some waiter posted of you and him at a restaurant on Tarth, and then there were tweets he found from someone saying they thought they'd seen you at a karting place.” 

“Shit,” Jaime muttered. 

“So you _are_ with her.”

“I'm on Tarth,” Jaime said evasively. “Just a couple days to get away. Nothing untoward.” 

“I'm sure the media will treat it as a not-at-all-salacious summer vacation with your race engineer when you have never taken a summer vacation with a race engineer before. Ever.” 

“You don't have to make it sound tawdry.” 

“I'm not. I'm just stating the facts. The facts themselves are suspicious.” 

Jaime sighed. “Has Varys told father anything else?”

“Is there anything else to tell?”

“No,” Jaime said, and the lie tasted bitter in his mouth. He wanted to tell his brother everything, but they couldn't chance it. Brienne didn't even trust her own father with the truth. He loved Tyrion, but his brother was still a Lannister. 

Tyrion hummed on the line, a curious, knowing sound. “Will you take some advice, big brother?”

“Not from you.” 

“Whatever you're playing at, you should stop,” he went on, ignoring Jaime. “If, as you say, nothing is happening, you're harming Brienne by being there.” 

“What if something were going on?” 

“Then it's you who's the family fool.”

“Fuck you.” 

“So touchy for someone who's only there for an innocent vacation.” He could picture Tyrion raising his eyebrows. “Perhaps you should have gone to Dorne instead.”

“Perhaps you should learn how to suck your own cock and keep your mouth too full to speak.” 

“Alas, I have dedicated my life to trying, but even with the shortness of my body and the length of my cock it's not to be.” Jaime laughed in spite of himself. “Father is watching you, Jaime, this year more than ever before. If you want to win, you must do whatever it takes.”

The echo of their father was loud in Tyrion's warning words. Jaime swallowed hard. “I'll keep that in mind. Is that all, or do you have any other dire portents to share?” 

“I drank the last of my best whiskey last night, that's got to mean something.” 

“It means you drink you too much. Go back to sleep, Tyrion.”

“See you soon,” his brother said, firm and knowing, before hanging up. 

Jaime cursed loud and started up his motorcycle. Tyrion was right, of course: the World Championship was not a sure thing, no matter the spectacular season he'd already had. Fortunes changed by the merest touch of tires, the simplest unplanned skid around a corner. Jaime understood that in a visceral way. 

Yet it had been so easy to forget it all when he was with Brienne. He hadn't forgotten about racing since he was eight years old. She had been a distraction since the beginning, but it was almost starting to feel like racing was the distraction, and that he couldn't abide. 

Jaime opened the throttle on his bike and took another tour around Tarth. He would decide what to do with the rest of his break later, when the feel of Brienne's tongue wasn't so fresh on his, when Tyrion's serious voice wasn't so loud in his mind. For now he used the still unfamiliar roads to pull his mind from it all: from Brienne, from Tyrion and his father, from what awaited them in King's Landing and beyond.

* * *

Brienne arrived early at the top of Evenfall Hill and parked in the much busier parking lot. She tried not to blush too hotly with the memories of what had happened the last time they were here. There were families and couples in the meadow today, all of them enjoying one of the last nights of summer, a reminder that she and Jaime were to be here just as friends even though they'd left here last time as so much more. 

By the time she had her dad's soft blanket laid out on a patch of grass near the far edge of the meadow and was rifling around in the basket of food and paper plates she'd brought for dinner, the sun was dipping near the ocean and Jaime was heading her way, carrying two big water bottles. Her heart sped up to see him again; she'd been so surprised to find him on her doorstep in the middle of the night, never guessing he'd shown up just to be with her. He'd made it clear that was his only goal once the door shut behind him, though, not even waiting to get back to her bedroom before he had her shirt off and his burning mouth on her skin. She had not done a good job of being quiet. 

Brienne flushed as she looked at his mouth now, knowing all that it was capable of, the things he could say to her in the dark night. He smirked when he got close enough to catch her watching, and when he licked his lips she caught her breath. 

“Hello,” she managed to say as he lowered himself gracefully to the blanket, near but not too near. 

“Long time no see.” 

“Did you have a good day?”

“No,” he said, leaning nearer. “I was much too far away from you.” 

“Jaime,” she sighed, and then wrinkled her nose. “Are you smoking again?”

He grunted and leaned away. “I talked to my brother this morning, my family drives me to all my bad habits.” 

Brienne's throat closed a little. “Is everything all right?” she choked out. 

“You mean does he know about us? Not exactly, no, but some of your island friends have shared their Kingslayer spottings and that has stirred up the hornets' nest back home.” 

“Is your father-”

“In the dark still and mad as a wet cat about it. But the longer I stay here, the harder it gets to explain away a vacation on Tarth being just a friendly visit.”

“You have to go.” Jaime nodded, looking unhappy. “When?” she asked, trying to be calm about it, trying to ignore the tremulous disappointment that even the little time they had left would be taken from them. 

“I'm taking the late ferry tonight.”

“Tonight?” she whispered, stricken. She'd hoped he would come home with her again, sneak into her house and imprint himself in every corner that she'd be able to be there alone and still feel him. 

“It's not the end of anything between us,” he said fiercely, capturing her with his narrow, burning stare. “We can keep this up in King's Landing.” 

“How? If your father suspects even here-”

“He doesn't suspect anything except I'm not acting the way he understands. In King's Landing we have every reason to be together. Besides I'm much better at avoiding paparazzi there, I can come to your apartment and no one will ever have to know.” 

“What about race weekends?”

“Every town has a sketchy hotel that won't mind cash upfront for a night.” 

She flushed thinking of them slipping away after a race to meet in some dingy room, Jaime still sweaty from the thrill, his skin sweet with champagne. “We couldn't even manage here without you being talked about,” she said, reluctant still. 

“Brienne.” Her name was a plea on his tongue and she shut her eyes briefly, feeling it shiver down through her. “If you want to stop, we will and we'll have only a work relationship for the rest of the season. But don't do it because you think my father will find out. We can make this work. All of it.”

Brienne had never dreamed of having everything; she had barely been able to hold onto even the smallest things she wanted. But Jaime seemed so certain, his meadow-green eyes glimmering with sincerity in the sunset. 

“Okay,” she whispered, and he exhaled, relieved, leaning towards her like he would kiss her. Brienne rolled her eyes and pushed him back. “Don't mess it up two seconds after we agreed to it,” she said. 

“I have to admit the hardest part is seeing your beautiful mouth and not being able to kiss it.” When she immediately blushed he grinned at her. “So easily embarrassed even now, Wrench? After I've had my cock so deep inside you?” he added, his warm voice low. 

Brienne must have looked as red as the sun caressing the sea. “You cannot do that at the garage,” she gasped, taking a sip of the water he'd brought. 

“What, fuck you?” he murmured. 

“Jaime,” she hissed. But now that he'd said it the idea played like a vivid movie in her mind: her up on the bench, tools clattering to the floor while Jaime took her, his car gleaming red behind him. 

“You're thinking about it aren't you?” He shifted a little and she glanced down to find he'd obviously been thinking about it, too. 

“What are we going to do?” she asked seriously, feeling the impossible weight of it, of what would happen if they failed, cutting through all her imaginings like they were made of tissue paper. 

“We're going to have a nice dinner,” he said, just as serious. “Then we'll say goodbye like good friends, just for a few days.”

“And then?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Then we do the best we can.” 

It was all they had. She just hoped it would be enough.


	14. September (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime was sitting with one hip up on the edge of his desk, staring at her with a hungry look that she was now all-too-familiar with. Brienne flushed, her belly tightening when he licked his lips and beckoned her in. She glanced around but the offices were still mostly empty, the few people there at this time bent down over their laptops already. 
> 
> Brienne opened up the door to his office and gripped the doorknob tight to keep from running into his arms. 
> 
> “Good morning,” she said from the open doorway. 
> 
> “Come in and close the door,” he said, his voice deep and commanding like it had been when he'd been under her in her bed just days ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did finally get through my block on the chapter I'm working on but I didn't finish it, so I'm taking a chance here by posting. But the holidays have arrived and so will several house guests and I've gotta get this out now while I can for sure. I suspect there will not be a Sunday update this week.

It was easier to leave Tarth the second time. She knew what she was waiting for her when she stepped off the ferry and into Sandor's waiting car: work that she loved, friends she had missed, and Jaime. 

They had texted each other every day since he'd left, nothing incriminating, just brief reminders that what had happened between them was real, and she was anxious to see him again to make sure the friendly texts weren't just lies. There was always the chance that the distance had soothed his fervor for her. 

“How was your break?” Sandor asked as he drove her down the long highway to King's Landing. 

Brienne blushed hard and she caught him frowning at her, confused. “Fine,” she stammered. “How was yours?”

“I worked.” 

“Oh.”

“You think all I do is drive you around?”

She shrugged a little. “I guess not.” 

Sandor snorted. “I have bus and truck licenses, too. Pick up some extra work during the break when I'm not being paid to ferry you and Lannister all over.” 

So it _was_ Jaime who was paying for Sandor for her, and had been since the beginning. She felt a warm twist in her heart. “It's good to see you, Sandor.” 

He only grunted, but he put on the radio station he knew she liked for the drive.

* * *

Monday morning she was at the Lannister Corp Racing offices early, and she spotted Jaime's motorcycle in the CEO spot as she walked in through the glass doors. Her heart sped up as she pushed her way through, greeted a few engineers who had beat her in and were already at work, exchanged pleasantries about what they'd been up to at the break, before finally being able to escape and head back to her cube. The blinds of Jaime's office were up and she saw light coming from inside, caught the shadow of his movement and she forced herself to walk at a normal pace to her own desk, set down her things, and then, finally, when she was certain no one was watching or would think her behavior unusual, she looked up into Jaime's window. 

He was sitting with one hip up on the edge of his desk, staring at her with a hungry look that she was now all-too-familiar with. Brienne flushed, her belly tightening when he licked his lips and beckoned her in. She glanced around but the offices were still mostly empty, the few people there at this time bent down over their laptops already. 

Brienne opened up the door to his office and gripped the doorknob tight to keep from running into his arms. 

“Good morning,” she said from the open doorway. 

“Come in and close the door,” he said, his voice deep and commanding like it had been when he'd been under her in her bed just days ago. 

“I think that would be a bad idea.” 

“Don't you trust me?”

“I don't trust me,” she said, soft, and his chest heaved with the force of his caught breath. 

“Did you enjoy your break?” he asked, and though he was clearly trying to keep his tone light she could hear the cracks in it. 

“It was all right.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that all? Nothing exciting happen?”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

Jaime smirked. “Try me.” 

Her fingers were sweaty on the doorknob that she still held in a death grip. “I should get to my email, did you need anything?” His eyes answered that question for her, and she swallowed and looked out into the offices. “We have a meeting later to talk about White Harbor, and I've scheduled some time for you in the virtual trainer.” 

“Then I'll see you later, Brienne.” 

“Lannister,” she said, emphasizing what she'd come to think of as his work name. He looked at least a little repentant and gave her a small nod before she closed the door and went back to her cube. She heard the blinds close and breathed a sigh of relief that he'd thought of it; the temptation to constantly look at him through the window while she was trying to work would have been too much. As it was she would read and answer a few emails and then glance up to find the blinds still closed. She wondered briefly if he was in there touching himself and she had to grip the edge of her desk to keep from going in to check. 

When Podrick and Bronn arrived at their desks later, Brienne was back under control and happy to see them, giving Pod another hug and asking after his break, shaking Bronn's hand and laughing at his tales of his weeks home with Lollys. For all his fussing, he seemed to genuinely love his wife, and she knew the time apart during the season was a strain on both of them. Jaime came out of his office while they were talking and greeted the men with casual friendliness, barely even glancing at Brienne. 

“What about you, Lannister? What did you get up to over the break?” Bronn asked. 

“I took your advice,” Jaime said, smiling a little. 

Bronn briefly glanced her way and she froze, confused. Had he told Jaime to go to Tarth? “That so? Glad to see you're finally listening to me.”

“I don't plan on making a habit of it.”

Bronn rolled his eyes but he was suddenly very purposefully not looking at Brienne and when she turned her questioning stare to Jaime he just smiled at her like it was some private joke. 

“See you later for our meeting, Wrench, I've got some post-break interviews to do.” 

“Okay,” she said, nonplussed. Bronn sat down at his desk, opened his laptop, and cursed loudly. 

“Three hundred emails! Which one of you fuckers was working over the break?” he yelled around the empty offices, and Pod just shook his head and went to his desk, leaving Brienne with her unease. 

By mid-morning she had fallen back into the whirlwind of work and forgot Bronn and Jaime's unusual exchange until she and Jaime were alone again in his office to talk about White Harbor, the blinds and door wide open at her insistence. 

Jaime behaved himself for the most part, except for one point when he urged her to lean closer to look at something on his monitor and he'd whispered, “what time should I be at your place tonight?” without warning. 

She shot him a dour look and pointed to a turn on the screen without seeing it. “Let's talk about this one.” 

He leaned back, gave her the same smile he'd given Bronn and she narrowed her eyes at him. “What's that look about?” he asked curiously. 

Brienne glanced at the offices; no one was paying them any attention. “What advice did you get from Bronn?”

“About White Harbor?” 

“No,” she sighed, lowering her voice. “Earlier, when you were talking about the break. You said you'd taken his advice and he looked at me weird.” 

“Ah.” Jaime rubbed his stubbled chin. “Back in July, at Lannisport, Bronn suggested I do something about my very obvious attraction to you.” 

Brienne's face burned with embarrassment. “So he knows?”

“No, he told me to leave you alone and go find a willing woman. I just didn't tell him I ignored the first part of that advice.” 

“Why would he tell you that?”

Jaime's face darkened, but only for a moment, like a cloud passing over the sun. “Because he's an emotionally constipated idiot. But he doesn't know, that's what matters. No one knows but us, Brienne.” 

“That won't be true if you keep calling me Brienne. And you have only yourself to blame for that.” 

He laughed and briefly touched her hand, a bright shock of warmth before it was gone again. “How's your first day back at work going?”

“Good. The crew lost some cohesion with the break but we're doing extra pit stop practice this week to make up for it. My driver continues to be annoying but somehow I find it charming now.” 

“What a coincidence, I was just thinking the same about my very stubborn race engineer.” 

They grinned at each other across his desk and Brienne was sure hers was as dopey-looking as his. “Let's pick this up tomorrow,” she said, shaking her head to try to break the connection. “I've got to go talk to Bronn about tires again.” 

“You have my sympathy.” 

Brienne picked up her laptop and clutched it to her chest, scanning the offices one more time before she leaned forward a little and murmured, “nine o'clock tonight,” before leaving his office, feeling his hot-eyed stare on her the entire way back to her desk.

* * *

The wait for Jaime at her apartment that night was excruciating. She'd gotten home a little after seven, wishing Sandor goodnight before hurrying up to clean her place, change her bedsheets, and take a shower, and even still she was done before eight-thirty. By the time he knocked on her door – five minutes early, she noted gratefully – she was fairly vibrating with anticipation. 

She opened the door and he stood there with a small bouquet of bright purple lilacs in a sea-green vase. “They're not real, so they won't die,” he said. “But I thought you might like some color for your apartment and you said these were your favorite.”

Brienne took the vase with her heart in her throat, and ushered him in. She set it down on the kitchen counter, the burst of color immediately cheering the room. Jaime shrugged off his riding jacket and tossed it casually onto one of the dining room chairs. 

“Have you eaten?” he asked, assessing her apartment. As far as she knew, except for the flowers, it looked exactly the same as the last time he'd been here. 

“I have.” 

“Good,” he said, and then he wrapped her up and kissed her desperately. “I've been dreaming about this since I left Tarth. Couch first,” he panted into her mouth, “then the bed.” 

She met his need with her own, tugging his bottom lip with her teeth, nipping and sucking at his jaw, his neck. He was wearing what she thought of as his Lannister cologne, something spicy and rich, and she wanted to roll in it and get his scent over all of her. They stumbled to the couch, Brienne pushing Jaime down first and then straddling him, their noses and teeth knocking together in their abandon to pull off each other's clothes while never separating their mouths. Somehow they were finally both naked and she sank down on Jaime's length before he could even reach for the condom. Brienne shuddered at the feel of him, the tension of the day – the last several days – finally released; but Jaime was more rigid than ever, his every muscle in sharp relief as he held completely still. 

“Brienne,” he rasped, his fingers clenching hard on her hips, “we forgot-”

“I didn't forget,” she said, shifting as much as she could in his impossibly strong grip, making him moan. “I got an IUD a few days ago.” She bit her lip, suddenly embarrassed. “I wanted to surprise you.” 

If she had thought him desperate before, it was nothing compared to him surging up from the couch to wrap his arms around her, his cock going deeper with the movement. He turned them so that she was under him and not entirely sure how she'd gotten there – and not caring when he started thrusting into her like he would die if he stopped. She was sure she would, and when he added his fingers to the mix she knew her neighbors would not appreciate the sudden scream it pulled from her lips, or Jaime's own, ecstatic shout as he came hard inside her. 

He collapsed on top of her, breathing hard, and she wrapped him up as best she could with her sweaty, boneless limbs. Jaime moved a little and kissed her cheek. 

“You didn't even ask if I've been tested,” he said, his voice both stern and weak. 

Brienne huffed a laugh, ran her fingers through his soft hair. “Have you?”

“Yes.” 

“So have I.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“No. You?”

“No. I'm glad we got that settled,” he said, pulling out and off of her so his head was on her stomach. He kissed her belly button. “That was a good surprise.” He started to move further down and she tugged him back up, wanting his weight. 

“I'm exhausted,” she said, smiling fondly at him. “Let's just lay like this and watch a mindless tv show for awhile.” 

“You're sure?”

“Yes.” She moved around, dragging and shifting him until they were spooning, Jaime in front, his back against her chest, her arms and legs holding him tightly to her. It was like having the world's warmest, most attractive teddy bear to snuggle with. She put her chin over his shoulder, their cheeks pressed together while they watched a reality cooking competition late into the night. 

When she started drifting off he slithered out of her arms and half-walked, half-carried her to her bedroom. “Time for sleep,” he said to her barely awake protests at being shooed into the bathroom and then when she was done tucked into bed. 

“Don't go,” she murmured, holding his hand. 

“This is secret, remember?”

“Not to my neighbors it's not.”

Jaime snorted. “We'll work on that next time. I can't stay til morning, I have to go home,” he said and even in her half-awake state his regret was clear. He kissed her palm and then tucked her arm under the covers, too. “Good night, Brienne.” 

“Good night, Jaime,” she said on a yawn. 

She was asleep before she heard him close the door.

* * *

The next morning they greeted each other with “Wrench” and “Lannister” and by all accounts were working, and snarking, together the same as they ever had, but by the afternoon Jaime had followed her into the women's locker room he'd had built at her demand, and pressed her against the set of six metal lockers to kiss her thoroughly.

“We can't,” she said, sliding her hands under his shirt to scratch her blunt nails down his back, holding him close. “We can't.” 

“We are,” he said, sucking at the tender skin of her neck while she trembled. They broke apart a few minutes later when they heard footsteps, both of them flushed with desire. 

“No more kissing at work,” Brienne insisted, and insisted again on Wednesday after he'd tugged her into the storage room, closed the door behind them, and devoured her mouth under the unforgiving florescent lights. _He must actually like me_, she'd thought as she ground eagerly against his thigh. _No one looks good in this lighting._ Jaime pulled back to grin seductively at her. _Except him_, she amended. 

It had been Jaime who had stopped them that time, claiming if he spent another second alone with her in the room they'd have to get naked. Brienne had for a fleeting moment considered it and then shook her head at herself. Never in her life had she been this interested in sex, but every time she thought about Jaime now she thought about doing all sorts of inappropriate things to him. She had been around handsome men before; her crush on Renly had at first been due to his looks and charm, but even in his kindness she had never felt this desperate to be near him. She never would have imagined a man would be even half so desperate to be near her, either. She had mostly stopped waiting for Jaime to come to his senses; they had worked side-by-side for too many hours on too many days to not allow him that trust, even when all her life wanted to tell her differently.

However they couldn't seem to connect in the evenings. Tuesday night Jaime got stuck late at a racing-related function, and on Wednesday Brienne was so tired from a busy day of pit stop practice that she'd fallen asleep at her dining room table and missed his text. Thursday they traveled to White Harbor, Jaime chauffeured by Sandor, Brienne on the team bus. He stopped by the mobile garage in the afternoon for the track walk, but they were joined by Lancel and Theodan and kept a professional distance the entire time. 

When Brienne finally got to her hotel room late that night after overseeing the building and tuning of the car for free practice tomorrow, she was both exhausted and wired. Jaime had hovered around the garage for awhile, watching her work, until she'd glared at him and sent him away. But his scent had lingered and though she'd been devoted to her tasks he'd been a ghostly presence the entire time. She checked the clock and sighed. He was a zealot for his sleep schedule in the days before the race and it was past his usual bedtime, but she sent him a message anyway on a foolish whim. 'Are you up?'

It took only seconds for his answering 'Yes.' 

'Shouldn't you be asleep?'

'Was waiting for you'

Brienne smiled down at her phone. 'Long day.'

'Tired?'

'Not too tired' she sent, hoping he'd understand. 

His next message was an address, a room number, and '30 minutes.' 

Stomach trembling with excitement, Brienne punched in the address and saw it was about twenty minutes away by car, a lonely motel stuck on a rundown street between an auto parts store and a pawn shop, both of which were closed this late. She asked the hotel front desk to call her a taxi and ran her fingers through her hair in the mirror, debated about whether to bring a change of clothes before rolling up her outfit for the track tomorrow into a ball and shoving it in a plastic hotel laundry bag just in case. 

Twenty-nine minutes after Jaime's message, Brienne closed the door of the taxi, paid the driver cash through his window, and scanned the area. There were eight or nine cars parked in front of the two-story building, and a neon sign missing letters that declared the name as the 'azy Ee otel.' The vacancy sign looked new and was an almost blinding red, a lure in the dark night. The room number Jaime had given her, 120, was at the end of the first floor, about as private as you could get, especially given the light between 119 and 120 had burned out. She knocked gently on the door, a thin piece of wood that had likely been busted down before based on the patch job around the keyhole and hinges. 

The door opened and Jaime was there in only sweat pants, a single yellow light from inside highlighting his bare torso from behind. He'd taken a shower and his hair was wet and smooth on his head, his fresh soap scent like a drug. Brienne entered on his invitation and hesitantly looked around the small room. There was a single queen-sized bed with a thin cover on top that was possibly older than she was, threadbare carpet that had stains that were definitely older than she was, and walls that had been repainted white multiple times and never in the same shade. 

“Not to your usual standards,” she said wryly, setting her bag of clothes down next to the ancient television set. 

“I'm not here to sleep.” He came up behind her, kissed her neck as he untucked her shirt from her pants. 

“Are you sure you want to use that bed for anything?” she breathed, pressing back against him to find him already hard. 

Jaime pulled her shirt off her and then started on her pants. “We don't have to use the bed,” he whispered in her ear. 

“I don't trust the carpet either,” she said, her eyes closing as he stripped her down to just bra and panties, his nimble fingers sliding back up the inside of her legs and then out to her hips as he stood. 

She turned in his arms and slid her hand down the front of his sweatpants to discover he wasn't wearing any underwear. He looked up at her and smiled as sly as a fox. “Have you ever had sex against a wall?” he asked, rubbing slow circles on her lower back. “I think you'll find we're just the right height.” 

Minutes later, sweaty and whimpering, she discovered he was right. He was holding one of her legs up and curved around his ass with one hand, the other bracing himself as he thrust in long, slow strokes and she fell apart trapped between his strength at his front and the much less impressive wall at her back. 

“I wanted to do this on Tarth,” he rumbled into her ear, sliding out nearly all the way, before coming agonizingly slowly back into her until she was shuddering, urgent for all of him. 

“Why didn't you?” she gasped, leaning forward to kiss his face wherever she could reach, trying to hold him tight inside her. He shifted his hand to her wrist to hold her still as he did it again: out as she tried to follow, in so slowly she whined low in her throat. 

“Your dad showed up.”

She half-laughed. “Gods, on the road that first night?”

Jaime nodded against her neck. “If I'd been less of a gentleman, I'd have thought about it long before that.” He pulled back again and she swallowed down a plea, knowing he was torturing her on purpose, not ready to give in. 

“You're no gentleman,” she growled, earning a knowing grin. 

“I'm not.” He thrust hard and fast this time and she keened like the high-pitched scream of an engine finally letting go. “Fuck,” he whispered, quivering against her. Brienne scrabbled at his back, his ass, trying to get him to move, dammit; she needed to feel the wet friction, his pulsing heat. But he inhaled and was back to unhurried again, his body rigid with control, sweat on his temple, his thighs. Jaime moved relentlessly slow, every movement dragging sounds she couldn't control from her body. 

“Jaime,” she moaned, the only coherent word she could manage. “Jaime.” Just his name, over and over. 

“What do you want?” He slid back into her heat a centimeter at a time, like it wasn't driving them both to madness. 

She gripped his side so hard he winced but he didn't change his speed. “Please,” she finally begged and he trembled a little but didn't give in. 

“Please what?”

Brienne snarled in his ear and Jaime groaned into her sweat-covered neck. “Please just fuck me,” she pleaded, too aching for him to be embarrassed. 

He was in her all the way, his cock hard and hot as she clenched around him. “Not yet,” he said, pulling back out. She bit back a scream of frustration and shoved him back with her free hand, setting his eyes alight. 

“What do _you_ want?” she asked, gripping his upper arm, not sure if she wanted to shake him or pull him close. 

With the reflexes he'd spent a lifetime honing, he twisted his arm up to capture her other wrist against the wall and he pressed his cock against her pelvis, coating her skin with their mixed wetness. “I want you so desperate for me you'd lay down on that bed and thank me for it. I want you barely able to stand you've had so many orgasms. I want you like this: mad and full of fight as the Warrior, and just as able to push me away but aching for me so badly you never would.” Brienne couldn't breathe, she couldn't look away from him and the hypnotizing emerald of his eyes. “Because that's how I feel every fucking day I'm near you but we can't even kiss.” 

She stilled from where she'd been rolling against his body pressed hard to hers. “Jaime, you said-”

“I know.” He briefly tightened his fingers before he dropped her wrists and took a step back, and she shivered from the sudden cold. “I underestimated how much I wanted you.” 

“Do you want to stop this?” she asked, her voice much too small for her size. 

“No,” he said quickly. He pressed his palm to her cheek. “No. I'm just an asshole who always wants to get his way. It'll get easier.” He didn't sound like he believed it, but then neither did she. She'd been just as needy for him this week, and she didn't see how being around him more would make that go away. 

“Let's not waste this perfectly mediocre motel room,” she said, sliding her hand around his neck and urging him nearer. 

He kissed her tenderly, the exact opposite of who he had been just a minute before. “I don't know why you put up with me,” he sighed, pressing his forehead to hers. 

She knew, but she could not tell him. How could she explain how his voice in her ear on race day was as exciting as watching him drive? How she wanted to share every stupid thing at work with him the moment it happened? How that night falling asleep with him on the couch watching and discussing a show together was one of the happiest nights of her life? Brienne swallowed all of that down and instead put on her best playful look. “You're pretty good at sex,” she said. And if she imagined she saw a flicker of disappointment in his eyes, it was forgotten when he pulled her towards him by the hips and thrust hard inside her, his slow torture of before consumed by a sudden, desperate urgency in them both. When he groaned and stuttered against her moments later she came hard to the feel of him pulsing inside her, to the memory of him curled up warm in her arms.

* * *

Just outside their room hours later, new stains having been added to the surprisingly comfortable motel bed, Jaime held Brienne's hand against his chest and didn't kiss her. He wanted to, even though her full lips were already red from the storm of goodbye kisses he'd rained down on her before her taxi arrived, but he didn't. 

“Can you drive the first free practice today?” he asked and she nodded, her eyes glimmering with excitement. If it had been up to him, he'd let her drive every FP1 for him, but his father and uncle were displeased enough with her doing it only occasionally. The last time had been back in Winterfell and her experience on the track had helped him come in ahead of Stark. 

“You won't have had much sleep,” he continued and she rolled her eyes, delighting him. Everything she did delighted him, even when it annoyed him, or turned him on. Brienne was a bundle of nervous tics, proud behaviors, and sarcastic responses wrapping up a heart so full of kindness and soft hope that he veered constantly between wanting to have sex with her and wanting to wrap her up in a blanket and protect her. 

“Neither will you and you're much more precious about it.” 

“You should be nicer to your elders.” 

She snorted. “You're not that much older than me.” 

“You were _eight_ when I started F1.” 

“You're keeping up with me ok for now,” she retorted and as he opened his mouth to respond, the taxi honked impatiently. They both glanced over and then back at each other and Brienne pulled her hand away. “I'll see you later. Don't be late.” 

He was, a little, but he slept through his first alarm and didn't wake until his third one, grudgingly letting go a dream of walking hand in hand with Brienne in an endless summer meadow. 

By the time he got to the track she was already suited up, talking to Bronn about one of the many reports on the screen, so he let her be, going through his own check-ins and rituals. By the time he was done she was in the car and ready to take the track. He put on the headset as he always did when she drove during practice. 

“Radio check,” he said when she'd pulled out of the garage. 

“I hear you.” 

“Sleep well?” he asked lightly, and he saw her car weave ever so slightly on the screens. He could picture her annoyed glare. 

“Just fine thanks.”

The garage was quieter during practice, pit crew standing around chatting idly in their regular shorts and shirts instead of their race day jumpsuits, the engineers all muttering over readouts and reports. Kevan was wandering around somewhere and his father never attended practice sessions. Still, Jaime knew the radio chatter was being recorded for later review and potential publishing, so they had to be careful. 

“I had the strangest dream last night,” he said. Brienne didn't say anything, so he pressed on. “I was in the loveliest meadow in the middle of a terrible storm. But I was very warm and excited. What do you think it means?”

She picked up speed on the track as though she were trying to out-drive his question. 

“Radio still working, Wrench?”

“Yes, I was busy actually driving and not uselessly nattering on.” 

Jaime smirked. “Think on it then and you can get back to me.” 

Brienne drove faster. 

Half an hour later he was getting ready to call her back into the garage for the new wing they were testing when the newest crew member, Vargo Hoat Jaime recalled, sauntered up to him. The man had kept to himself since he'd been hired, not causing problems but not really bonding either. He did the work, though, and listened to Brienne, and if his gaunt face sometimes seemed more fit for a sneer than a smile, Jaime hadn't ever interacted with the man long enough for it to matter. 

“Lannithter,” Hoat said, his thick tongue making him lisp. When Jaime had first discovered the man's speech impediment he'd wondered if Tywin had hired him because of it; gods knew Jaime had taken enough shit from his father because of Podrick in the beginning. It would be just like Tywin Lannister to hire a new crew member out of cruelty. 

“Hoat,” Jaime said, nodding slightly. He kept his eyes on Brienne's car and the smooth curves of her cornering. She was noticeably better than that first winter test run in Dorne; Jaime idly wondered how she'd do in a real race, certain she would not come in last. 

“Will you be driving today?”

“Of course. I'll be driving FP2 as usual.” 

“I jutht wanted to be thure. The engineerth have changeth to make and we'll need time to adjutht the cockpit.”

“That's fine. Do you need me have her come in early?” They were given ninety minutes for each practice, but they didn't have to use them. 

“A few minuteth would be good,” Hoat said. He stood next to Jaime, arms crossed, watching Brienne drive. For no reason he could name, Jaime felt his skin prickle uncomfortably. Perhaps it was the odd look on Hoat's face, something hidden and somehow unkind. 

“Did you need something else?”

Hoat glanced at him, and for a moment Jaime swore he saw hatred, but it was a flash, there and gone, and could have easily been the reflection of the bright White Harbor sun. The man had been fine for months, it made no sense that he'd be different now. “I have everything I need,” Hoat said, and he ambled back to the others, standing near but outside of the pit crew that were chatting amiably. 

Jaime called Brienne back in for the wing change and a chance for the crew to run a quick pit stop practice, and the prickling feeling eased watching Hoat do his part as he'd done many times before. _You're like an old, nervous septa_ Jaime scolded himself, smiling at the man when he found Hoat looking his way as Brienne tore off again. 

Fifteen minutes before the end of the first practice, Jaime had Brienne start to slow down before pitting, and he was turning to meet her when the unmistakeable sound of a car slamming into the nearest corner roared through the pit alley, and he saw a wheel bounce high into the air. There was a gasp from the attending fans and the nearby teams and Jaime furiously scanned the monitors to find out who had been involved, unable to breathe. 

He found Brienne coming down the last corner before the accident, slowing and weaving carefully around the debris scattered along the track. Jaime felt the fear rush out of him in frantic relief until he saw whose car had been involved. It was Addam, the car a mess of metal turned on one side, one wheel gone, the rest at broken angles. 

There was no movement and little sound and even the purr of Brienne driving into the garage couldn't hide the quick whoop of the ambulance siren. He watched his friend's car intently, scanning for even the slightest sign of life, barely aware of Brienne coming to stand next to him and do the same. The course workers were already at the car, pulling pieces away, trying to help extricate Addam from the wreckage. 

“There,” Brienne said, pointing at the screen. Jaime narrowed his eyes and then gasped in relief. Addam's hand could be seen waving a little just over the top of the car, indicating that he was alive and able to move. “Thank the gods,” Brienne breathed. 

“Thank the engineers.” Jaime pulled off his headset and glared at her, realizing how easily she could have been caught in Addam's wake. If she'd been just a few seconds sooner, if they hadn't asked her to slow down to come in early, it could have been her the ambulance was coming for, and he could only have stood there too bound by their secret relationship to do anything but worthlessly pray. Jaime swallowed, yearning to hug her and feel her safe and whole in his arms, furious at everyone that he couldn't. He exhaled hard through his nose like an angry bull and stalked off, leaving Brienne frowning in confusion in his wake.

* * *

Addam was alive and didn't appear seriously injured but he was taken to the nearest hospital and free practice two was canceled to give the marshals time to figure out what had happened and clear the track. Given the amount of scrap metal, gas, and oil Addam's car had left in its wake, it would take hours. 

Jaime could have taken Brienne back to the Lazy Eel with the free time, but she'd disappeared from the paddock and he couldn't bear another quick session in a dirty motel room tonight anyway. He wanted to take her to his much nicer hotel, to his apartment in King's Landing, to her home on Tarth where they'd both be safe and together and what everyone else in the world thought wouldn't matter. 

Instead he was at a bar with his brother, who'd just showed up at Jaime's room and dragged him out. 

“Why are you even here?” Jaime grumbled as he threw back a finger of whiskey. 

“I love watching you drive in endless circuits around a twisty piece of asphalt, surely you know that. I just didn't realize I wouldn't get to be doing it today.” 

Jaime glared. “Don't you make a single fucking joke about the crash.”

Tyrion's mismatched eyes glinted, but he nodded once. “I would never. Is Addam all right? Everyone at the paddock seemed to have a different story.” 

“I don't know. He's alive. He was moving on the stretcher and waving at the fans, so I assume he's fine.” But Jaime knew there'd been men who had died hours or days later from bleeding that hadn't been stopped, and he wouldn't feel at ease until Addam was out of the hospital for good. 

“I didn't realize you and he were friends again.” 

“We're not.” They should never have stopped, if Jaime hadn't ruined it like he ruined every relationship. He thought of how he'd left Brienne back at the track. 

“So you're just mad that you didn't get to do your practice run today?”

Jaime didn't give his brother the benefit of rising to his bait, instead motioning to the bartender for another glass of whiskey. “Since your fondest wishes aren't coming true tonight, why don't you just leave?”

“And let my distraught brother drink alone? That would be heartless of me.” Tyrion was taking his time with much stronger and more expensive stuff and he finished off his first glass as Jaime got through his second. “I didn't see your race engineer when I arrived, and she's much too big to miss.” 

“Her name is Brienne,” Jaime grit between clenched teeth. He moved on to tequila and ignored Tyrion's slightly wide-eyed stare. 

“You have it bad, don't you?”

“I don't have anything except the world's most annoying siblings. Can't you kindly fuck off?”

“Why were you alone smoking in your non-smoking room when I came?”

Because he couldn't be with her, he wanted to say. It would have been too obvious to leave with Brienne from the track; it would have taken too much out of him emotionally to go to her and have to slip away again in the dark. “I was meditating.” 

“Mm.” Tyrion shook his head a little. “Doesn't seem to be helping.” 

“It's a journey.” 

Tyrion snorted. “At least you haven't lost your sense of humor, dear brother. I do worry though that some day you may lose your life.” 

“Everybody dies, even you.” 

“Not while they're behind the wheel of a 200 mile an hour death machine.” 

Jaime finally looked down at his brother then, saw real worry in his eyes. “I'm not going to die in a crash. Cars are safer than they've ever been. You saw that crash of Theon's and he was back racing today.”

“You drivers are idiots, though, constantly returning to a sport that's mostly tragedy, even if the tragedy is just never winning.”

“You've never understood,” Jaime said quietly, staring down into his empty shot glass. “We have to drive.” 

“You don't have to do anything but be happy. Regardless of how that happens, or who with.” 

Jaime thought of the night in Brienne's apartment, her cheek pressed against his, her weight like a blanket around his body, keeping him safe and warm. She'd started snoring softly in his ear as she fell asleep and his heart had burned like a coal in his chest, fanned hotter by every breath. “I don't want to be remembered as the boy who killed Aerys,” Jaime whispered, half-hoping Tyrion wouldn't even hear him. 

“You've done enough to go into the record books for more than that, Jaime.”

“Record books don't keep memories. I can win the world championship this year, Tyrion, and then next year I could do it again. I could get Lannister Racing behind me and be the best that ever was.” 

“I know you could,” Tyrion said solemnly. He put his hand on top of Jaime's on the bar. “I just worry about the cost.” 

“I thought you said I should do whatever it takes to win.” 

“I said in order to win you'd have to.”

Jaime thought of a dark movie theater, of a car as blue as the sea, of a stormy hilltop meadow. Of Brienne in his ear as he drove to victory. Could he leave all of that behind if it meant he'd stand with the World Championship trophy at the end of the season? If Kingslayer would come to mean how he'd taken down Arthur Dayne in the records, instead of Aerys on the track? 

“You're maudlin tonight, brother,” Jaime said, downing his last shot, “and I'm tired. Take your advice back to King's Landing and leave me be.” He patted Tyrion on the back and walked back to his hotel alone in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like a musical accompaniment to this chapter, I recommend Luke Wade's "Three Days."


	15. September (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Have you thought about what will happen after this season?” he asked, his voice low. 
> 
> She had specifically been denying herself those thoughts, had focused only on the present as everyone always seemed to want her to do. “That's a long way away,” she said, curling her fingers in his hand. “I just want to enjoy this.” 
> 
> He squeezed her hand, but the tension had returned and when Bronn walked by the window on his way to somewhere else they separated and did not touch again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Listen: of all the things that you are about to lose, this will be the most painful._  
\- Typhoon, "Wake"

White Harbor had changed something in Jaime, but Brienne couldn't tell exactly what, or why. She just knew that he'd shown up on Saturday at the track after Addam's crash, having tersely responded to her single text to him the night before asking if he was all right, and he'd looked pale and bleary-eyed, like he'd stayed up too late drinking. They'd preceded as usual for qualifying, Jaime easily capturing pole position, and though he'd been subdued, that night when she sent him another message he had responded quickly, asking her to meet him at the Lazy Eel Motel once more. 

There was little softness or patience to him in the grimy room; he seemed to be in agony with desire, and insatiable. After he'd had her on the bed on a sheet he'd brought from his room, she'd tried to run a soothing hand down his back but he'd moved to put his tongue at her heated core immediately, and when she'd staggered through her orgasm he had been ready for her again. 

“Jaime,” she'd whispered once he'd collapsed in her arms, shuddering almost violently. “What's wrong?”

“Everything,” he'd sighed, but he had seemed to relax, or at least calm down, and they had slept fitfully for an hour before Jaime had woken her up with his mouth on her neck. 

“You need sleep for the race tomorrow” she protested, even as she reached for him. 

“I need you,” he'd breathed against her lips, and he'd shown her one more time before he'd finally left for his actual room and what rest he could get before morning. 

Under-slept though they both were the next day, Jaime still came in first, moving even further ahead of Robb in the World Championship race. They didn't hug on the parc fermé, having both decided it was too dangerous to risk it, certain they'd forget themselves once they were in each other's arms, and Brienne didn't see him again until Tuesday when work began for the race the coming weekend at Oldtown. 

“Will I see you this week?” she asked him as they sat in his office doing their first review of the track. 

He glanced at her over the edge of her laptop. “You're seeing me now,” he said, though with much less humor than she'd said it back on Tarth. On her slight frown he added, “what about tonight?”

“I have the interview with Melisandre tomorrow, so I don't want to be up too late.”

“Do you need me to go with you?” 

“No, I'll be okay, I'm doing it with Arya.” 

“You'll do great,” he said sincerely, and the tenderness in his eyes was there again, surprising her with how much she had missed it the last few days. Wherever this Jaime had gone, he was still at the core of the much more unsettled and desperate man he'd recently been. Brienne reached around the laptop to brush her fingers over the top of his hand, his eyes following her every movement. 

“You can come if you like,” she offered. 

“It's better if I don't. This week is busy, I can use the time to catch up on some things.” He turned his hand over so her fingers were resting gentle in the palm of his hand. “Have you thought about what will happen after this season?” he asked, his voice low. 

She had specifically been denying herself those thoughts, had focused only on the present as everyone always seemed to want her to do. “That's a long way away,” she said, curling her fingers in his hand. “I just want to enjoy this.” 

He squeezed her hand, but the tension had returned and when Bronn walked by the window on his way to somewhere else they separated and did not touch again.

* * *

“How wonderful, you wore the same outfit!” Melisandre said in greeting when Brienne arrived on set. She flushed and the other woman squeezed her arm. “I mean no offense, it suits you,” she said. 

“Thank you,” Brienne murmured, letting Melisandre lead her to the stage. Arya was already there, dressed in a simple black pantsuit with pale, howling wolf heads all over it. It should have looked ridiculous but she seemed so at ease it was impossible for anyone to criticize. Brienne envied her her self-confidence. Arya smiled at Brienne as they walked up. 

“Why don't you get comfortable?” Melisandre said, gesturing at the empty chair next to Arya. “We'll get started in a few minutes.” 

“You look nice,” Brienne said as she sat down. 

“You look terrified.” 

Brienne managed to laugh a little at that through the hard knot of anxiety in her chest. “I was hoping it wasn't obvious.” 

“It'll be fine, I've got your back.” 

“I'm worried about what she's going to ask.”

“I thought you set up the ground rules before even agreeing to it?” 

“I did,” Brienne admitted, though even with her limited experience she was certain Melisandre would find some way around it. She didn't know how, though; they'd gotten in writing that Brienne would only talk directly about her experience at Lannister Corp Racing, that anything else in her past or speculation on her future were strictly off-limits. When they'd made the agreement in July, she'd had Jaime look it over and he had assured her it looked reasonable, but it felt dangerous now. _I should have demanded questions ahead of time_, she worried. 

“Then we stick to the rules,” Arya said matter-of-factly. 

“Let's hope she does.” 

Arya lifted her eyebrows in surprise, but Melisandre sailed over before either of them could say more. 

“I'm very excited to be doing this with you two,” she nearly sang, settling in the chair across from them and lifting her face for her final touch-ups from make-up. “Brienne, I will of course keep strictly to Lannister activities, as agreed.”

“Thank you,” Brienne said and then cursed herself for starting out from a place of weakness. Hadn't she told Jaime she hated interviews? Even with Arya next to her, spring-loaded for action, Brienne's palms were sweaty. She should have begged Jaime to come, to be a friendly face in the crowd beyond the cameras. 

“Any last minute concerns? Since this isn't live we'll re-do questions if we need to, so feel free to be open and off-the-cuff with your responses.” 

Brienne nodded tightly, not trusting Melisandre. The reporter was looking for a story and Brienne was going to give her only the one she wanted to give: that of a woman at an unprecedented role in Formula 1 and the struggles and successes she'd had doing the job. 

The interview started with Melisandre's introduction of Brienne and Arya, their roles with their respective teams, and their histories. Arya's was impressive: working in her family's garage from a young age, sailing through university to get her engineering degree, and now an internship with Stark motors that she'd earned an interview for by applying with an anonymous resume. In comparison Brienne felt even more foolish: her early years in karting were good, as was her time on Renly's F3 team, but they skipped over her two months at Griffin and all that was left was the occasional test drives and her dad's garage on Tarth. At least her time with Lannister Corp Racing was evidence she could strengthen herself with that she was cut out for the responsibilities Jaime had given her. 

“Let's start with what is probably an obvious question,” Melisandre finally said. “How did you two meet?”

They had agreed Arya would take any questions that were directed to both of them and she jumped in now. “On the track. I introduced myself to Brienne after the first race in Sunspear. I was excited to meet her, the word among the crews was she was something special.” 

Brienne flushed hotly and Melisandre smiled at her. “How wonderful. It must be nice to have another woman out there with you who isn't a trainer or a personal assistant.”

“It is,” Brienne said. 

There was a brief silence before Arya smoothly added, “we're both hoping that now that there's been one woman we'll see the other teams hiring a lot more. The lack of women in all levels of F1 has become impossible to ignore any longer, and more than in most sports it shouldn't matter. A woman can compete at every level with a man in racing.”

“Bold words,” Melisandre said, leaning forward a little. “Do you think a woman could compete in an F1 race?”

“Absolutely.” Arya looked offended she'd even asked. “What's stopping her? It's not like the men drive with their cocks.” 

There was a sigh from behind the cameras and Melisandre laughed. “Would you like to re-word that, or shall we just bleep it out?”

“Bleep it out. Keep your bleeper ready, I've got a lot to say on this subject,” Arya added with a smirk.

As the interview progressed, she proved it to be true. They spent some time on the history of women in the sport, an area with which Arya proved to be surprisingly knowledgeable, and Brienne was happy to throw in the occasional supporting comment but let the younger woman lead. The history then segued into women in F1 today, and Melisandre turned her attention fully to Brienne. 

“What were your first impressions of Jaime Lannister when he came to your father's garage to hire you?” 

Brienne's cheeks reddened a little, but she managed to smile. “I thought he was arrogant.”

Arya snorted next to her and Melisandre nodded. “You knew about his reputation?”

“Of course. I've been a Formula 1 fan all my life.”

“But you took the job anyway.”

“Absolutely,” she said in a firm voice. “Whatever the world thinks he's done, Jaime is a phenomenal driver, as he's proven this season.” 

“Yes, he's had quite a remarkable run.” Melisandre glanced down at the papers in her hand that she'd been using as a guide for questions. “Odds are heavy in his favor to win the World Championship this year. He could even clinch it early next month depending on how he and Robb Stark drive over the next few races. He has struggled to contend in F1 since the year he killed Aerys. Do you-”

“He didn't kill Aerys,” Brienne cut in, her hands tight around the arms of her chair. “There was an accident and Aerys tragically died.” 

Melisandre made a noncommittal sound. “Is that how you've always looked at what happened between Aerys and Jaime, or has working for him changed your mind?”

She tread carefully, knowing Jaime wouldn't want her to share his secret pain on national TV. “Working with Jaime has confirmed that he is a man dedicated to his sport, his car, and his crew.” 

“Does his dedication extend to vacationing with his crew?” Melisandre asked, her eyes narrowed and knowing, and Brienne's stomach dropped to the floor along with all the blood in her face. 

“What?” she choked out, throat closing. 

“There are rumors that Jaime spent part of his August break this year on Tarth.” She gestured at the monitor that showed the three of them onscreen and it flashed to an image of the picture Brienne took of Jaime and Arryk. “This photograph says he at least had a meal there one day.” 

Her mind was whirling, trying to decipher how much Melisandre actually knew and how much was just speculation meant to make Brienne give up her secrets. She should never have agreed to this, it was everything she was worst at. “We did have dinner one night,” Brienne said. “He came over to see Tarth when it wasn't raining.” 

Another photo came up on the screen, this time of them walking arm-and-arm into his father's birthday party. “He took you to his father's birthday as well, didn't he?”

Brienne nodded, mutely. 

“I went to his father's birthday party, why don't you show a picture of me?” Arya jumped in, annoyance making her tone sharp. 

Another photo: the two of them from the Amber Lounge, the one that Jaime had been so upset about when he'd seen Brienne airbrushed into someone more beautiful. _That woman could have been Jaime Lannister's girlfriend_, she thought fleetingly, a bright, tense thread in the dark. 

“That's from that dumb Women in F1 online article,” Arya said. “It was mostly wives and girlfriends, which is the problem we've come to talk about.” 

“It doesn't seem unusual how close the two of you seem to be?” Melisandre directed to Brienne. One last photo on the screen, this time of Jaime holding her in his arms at the Lannisport pool. 

“No,” Brienne said hoarsely. 

“You should see Jon with his race engineer, Satin. They're constantly off doing things together. I could show you ten pictures of them looking like they were about to kiss. Who cares?” Arya was furious now, Brienne could feel it radiating off of her, and the heat seemed to thaw her own frozen body. 

“I thought we were here to talk about the work,” Brienne said. “Not my friendship with Jaime.” 

“There have been rumors-”

“Which is exactly the problem with you giving them any weight here,” Brienne said tightly. “I did not sleep with Jaime Lannister to become his chief mechanic or his race engineer. I earned those jobs through skill and hard work and if I were Brian Tarth in any of those photos, you'd be talking about our 'bromance' with a smile and no one would question if I deserved it. It's infuriating and I'm sick of dealing with it, especially from other women.” 

Arya nodded vigorously and Melisandre sat back in her chair looking off-balance for the first time Brienne had ever seen. Though she was trembling, Brienne felt lighter than she had in months. 

“Now if you have any more questions about the actual work or what can be done to open up the sport to more women, I'm happy to answer them. But if we're going to just keep talking about pictures of two friends in their personal time, then I'm done.” 

Melisandre looked down at her papers, shuffled one to the front, ran her hand over her very red hair. “Why don't we take a quick break to give everyone a chance to gather themselves and we can resume.” She stood and hesitated a moment once the cameras' red lights blinked off. “I don't think the two of you are actually sleeping together,” she said. “I was just attempting to address the absurd rumors.” She hurried off to talk to her producers and Brienne sighed. 

“You all right?” Arya asked. 

“Yeah,” she lied. 

“She was totally inappropriate; you did a great job shutting her down. I hope it makes it into the final cut, even with the stupid photos. No one worthwhile really thinks you're sleeping with him. Just the assholes.” 

Arya patted her arm and hopped up to get some coffee, and Brienne didn't feel any better. She knew what Arya really meant: no one would believe someone like Jaime would actually be with someone like her. I'm so ugly it helps our secret, she thought, swallowing down hysterical laughter. Brienne pressed her fingers into her eyes for a moment, holding all of it in: the tears and the anger and the bitter humor. It was a good thing Jaime wasn't here; he would have jumped onstage and ruined it all, though Brienne let herself imagine Melisandre's face if he had swept Brienne into his arms and kissed her there in front of the cameras. 

_Almost would have been worth it_, she thought, gathering herself as Arya and Melisandre returned. 

The director counted them back to camera and the red lights flicked back on. 

“Now,” Melisandre said, smiling like they were all friends having a casual chat. “Let's talk about opportunities for girls in karting.”

* * *

'How'd it go?' Jaime texted Brienne later that afternoon. 

'Fine' she sent back. 

'That's it?'

She considered how much to tell him, decided it wouldn't do to get him riled up if Melisandre just cut the segment about him anyway. 'Yeah. Arya did most of the talking, which was fine with me. Are you free tonight?'

He didn't respond right away and she could picture him peering at his phone, knowing she was brushing off his questions about the interview and not sure how much to push. 'I'm not' he finally sent back with several frowning emojis. 

She sighed. 'You work too much'

'So do you'

Brienne had gone home after the interview to finish up her work day from there since Jaime was in other meetings all day and the crew were busy making small tune-ups to the car. 

'Tomorrow is travel day' she sent. 

'I guess I better start looking for motels'

She flushed, her fingers hovering over a text that would be entirely indefensible if someone saw it, and then deleting it quickly. 'Guess so' she decided on instead. And then, before she lost her nerve, she typed 'pick somewhere less likely to be diseased' with a smile emoji and hit send, her stomach quivering as though she expected Tywin to immediately burst through her door and fire her. 

All that happened was Jaime sending back a winking emoji and 'I'll do my best' and she went to sleep that night eager for the morning.

* * *

“This is better,” Brienne gasped as Jaime sucked and nibbled at her long neck the next night. He'd spent entirely too much time that day finding the perfect place for them: somewhere Brienne would feel was safe from prying eyes but also where neither of them would be uncertain about actually using the sheets. The front desk still accepted cash, although they'd looked at him a lot more skeptically when he'd paid for the room with it. But enough dragons were always louder than anyone's morality and Jaime had paced around the fair-sized room for an hour before Brienne arrived with a light knock at the door. 

He laid her down on the bed, tossing aside her little bag of clothes and toiletries to a far corner, pressing her into the mattress with his body until they were both moaning softly. 

“I missed you,” he whispered in her ear, running his hand up her side under her work shirt. 'Missed' did not accurately describe what he felt, but it would do; he didn't know how to explain how her unusual absence on Wednesday had made him feel out-of-step all day, like his world wasn't quite right. They had spent at least part of every working Wednesday together since March, a habit Jaime had not even been consciously aware of until it had been thrown off. 

She kissed him hard and he knew she had missed him, too, settling anxious nerves he hadn't been fully aware he'd had. They didn't need to talk after that, their bodies saying everything for them with soft sighs, the stroke of a calloused hand, their mouths pressed open and hot against skin. When she shuddered and whimpered under him, his fingers bringing her to a quiet, desperate climax as he thrust into her slowly, Jaime closed his eyes and let her pull his own from him, wishing he could give her everything as freely as he gave her this. 

They curled into each other after, sweaty and breathing deep. Jaime kissed her temple. “Seven more races.” 

“Over half done,” she agreed, her fingers tickling his chest as she rubbed her hand over the hairs there. 

“Do you think we can do it?”

“I know you can. You already have.” 

She thought he was talking about the world championship. “I haven't done anything yet,” he said, joining her conversation. He tucked his arm under his head and stared up at the ceiling. “What if-”

“No.” He glanced at her and she lifted up, her mouth in the firm, annoyed schoolteacher line he liked so much. When he tried to kiss it away she ducked her head. “I'm serious, Jaime. No what ifs. You're having the best year of your career. It's okay to believe in yourself. It anything happens, it won't be because of you.” 

“It won't be because of you, either,” he said, overwhelmed with how much he wanted to hold her close and never let go. 

“We'll see about that.” He frowned at her and she looked away. “How was work yesterday?” she asked, so obviously trying to distract him and failing that he had to laugh. 

“Boring without you there. Not a single person insulted me.” 

“You must have been insufferable. I'll have to assign an alternate for when I'm gone.”

“Or you could just not go,” he whispered in her ear, pulling gently at the lobe with his teeth. 

“Are you going to be one of those overbearing boyfriends? Because if so we need to set some limits now.”

Jaime went still, his skin tingling. She'd only been teasing, but the word 'boyfriend' set off a chain reaction he couldn't hide. As he struggled to find some appropriately light-hearted response, Brienne turned her head away, looking uncomfortable. 

“Sorry,” she said, “I didn't mean-”

“Is that what I am?” 

She still wouldn't look at him. “I don't know. I don't know what any of this is.” 

_Don't ask_, he warned his heart, but his errant mouth didn't listen; it never did. “We could take all this public and make it official.” 

“You know we can't.”

“I know _you_ can't,” he said and gods when would he learn to just shut up? She sat up in bed, pulling the sheets around her like armor. Her shoulders were low, pale hills, round and sloping down, freckles scattered like dying flowers. 

“Are we going to just keep having this conversation? You keep saying you'll be ok and then a few days later you're not. You said it yourself Jaime: seven more races, at least.” 

He sat up, too, the sheet falling down, exposing all of him. “I'm sorry that I want to be able to hold your hand on the street, or hug you after a race.” 

“That's not fair,” she said quietly, but she was mad now, too, he could see it in the taut line of her neck. “You know why I can't.” 

Jaime looked down at his own hands, curled them as tightly as he could until the knuckles were white and the instinctive, angry words were trapped inside them where they couldn't hurt Brienne. “I hate hiding this,” he sighed. 

She turned her head slightly to the side, her uneven profile sad in the dim light of the room. “I do, too.” Brienne exhaled slowly and looked away. “Melisandre asked about us at the interview.”

“She did?”

“She doesn't know anything. She said she was just trying to squash the rumors. The ridiculous rumors that we could be together.” 

“They're not that ridiculous.”

“Of course they are.” Brienne stood from the bed, dragging the comforter around her body. Wrapped up in it she looked even bigger, and somehow more fragile. “Why would someone like you ever want to sleep with someone like me?”

“Do you really not know?”

She bit her lip and pulled the comforter tighter. “I don't want to hear any well-meaning lies right now,” she said, her voice thick with anguish, and Jaime stood quickly from the bed to hold her face in his hands. He studied her carefully while she avoided his gaze; examined every misplaced line, every freckle, her big white teeth, her pale eyebrows. She was a composite of awkward pieces, and she was Brienne, and that was enough for even the best of men. For a man like him, she was a once in a lifetime chance. 

Jaime kissed her tenderly, not seeking anything from her in the press of his lips, only wanting to give her everything she was to him. When he pulled back, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. 

“Have you ever considered that everyone thinks it's ridiculous because I'm not good enough for you?”

She spluttered a little, a small laugh that seemed to surprise even her. “No, I have never considered that.”

“You should,” he murmured. He rubbed his thumbs over her cheeks, down over her full bottom lip. “Because it's true.” 

“Now _you're_ being ridiculous.” 

“Mark my words, Brienne. Some day you're going to realize how much better you could do, how much easier it would be with someone else, and it'll be over for me,” he said, and though he'd started in a joking tone he couldn't keep it up, the seriousness of it impossible for him to ignore. 

“Jaime,” she breathed, her head shaking in his hands, and he kissed her, tugged the comforter off to spread his hands over her sides and down her ass, and pulled them both back down to the bed to keep her from telling him any well-meaning lies.

* * *

Jaime had become unstoppable, it seemed, and he soared to his most dominating win yet at Oldtown, followed by a celebratory evening in their getaway hotel room where Brienne had eagerly bent over the desk and let him take her from behind barely a minute after she walked in the door. Her pants had been around her ankles, his hands bunched in her shirt, and she'd had to bite her own forearm to keep from yelling too loudly when he snuck one hand around her hip and between her legs as he'd thrust hard into her, the slap of their bodies loud in the room. 

They had showered together afterward, packed together in the just-big-enough space, Jaime rubbing some generic fruit-scented shampoo into her hair and directing her under the shower head to rinse it clean before tenderly washing her back and chest. She'd returned the favor, her fingers digging into his scalp as he moaned slightly in pleasure. Somehow they managed to make it back out of the shower before they were kissing again, Brienne overwhelmed with how much she yearned for him at all hours of the day, whether he was there pressed up against her or not. 

It had been almost impossible to leave him that night; they'd ended up wrapped around each other snarking together about a random bad movie on cable TV, Jaime idly running his fingers through her hair, Brienne rubbing slow circles on his stomach. When the movie had ended he'd turned off the TV and kissed the top of her head and gotten dressed, and though he didn't complain once or beg her to stay, she heard the plea anyway, except this time it was coming from her own heart. 

They didn't see each other at all on Monday, though she texted him when she arrived home. 

'Back at my apartment' she sent. 

'Me too. How's yours?'

It was exactly as she had left it Thursday morning: tidy, and empty. 'Everything's where I left it.'

'Going shopping?'

Brienne hesitated. 'Unless I have other plans.'

There was no response for a moment and then 'You need food and it's Monday. Can't have you off schedule.'

'Piss off' she sent, amused and frustrated and lonely. 

He didn't respond. 

Tuesday morning, Brienne went in early and headed straight for the gym, eager to work off some of the nervous energy that had slowly settled in her body the night before. As she completed her deadlift set with a new high weight, she noticed a man she'd never seen before hovering in the corner. On first glance he was completely non-threatening: entirely bald head, a soft round body, obsequious features and posture. But when she met his gaze his eyes reminded her of a very intelligent, very patient spider waiting for her to stumble into his web. 

“Ms Tarth,” he said in a perfumed voice, “Tywin Lannister would like to speak with you.” 

Brienne's stomach knotted immediately, a sharp cramp in her belly that did not go away. “I'm almost done here,” she managed to get out, sliding the weights off the bar and back into their spaces. 

“Now, if you will. I'll have someone put that away for you.”

She looked down at herself and back at the man. “Can I shower? Change?”

“I'm afraid not,” he said, curving his lips in what she would have called a smile if it hadn't been so oily and knowing. “He wishes to see you _now_.”

Brienne picked up her nearby phone and slipped it into the pocket of her workout shorts before she followed the man, smoothing down her hair as best she could. He led her through a back exit she'd never paid attention to before, up two flights of a dim stairwell, and out to a quiet, lushly carpeted hallway that breathed money. The man led her to the end where an imposing mahogany door was closed, and an empty receptionist's desk sat off to the side. “In there,” the man said, gesturing at the door. 

She reached for her phone to text Jaime a heads-up and the man cleared his throat when he saw it before holding out his open palm. “No phones, please. I will hold onto that for you.” 

“I'd rather not.” 

“I understand your reluctance, Ms Tarth, but we must protect the secrets of the company.” 

“I'm not going to steal anything,” she said, offended. 

“Of course not. But has your phone been checked for bugs?” Brienne blinked uncertainly and the man smiled in victory. “Your phone, please.” 

She gingerly placed the phone in his hand, feeling like she was suddenly alone in a dark sea now in a way she hadn't been before. On the man's look, Brienne opened the door to Tywin's office and stepped inside. 

The room was huge and still the giant desk that matched the color and heft of the door commanded it, as did the severe-faced man sitting behind it. There were gold curtains at the windows, pulled back to let in the morning sunshine, a few potted plants tucked in the corners as though they were cowering in fear, and gold and marble statues of lions and race cars and artifacts from Essos on pedestals along the walls. She wanted to look at them instead of Tywin, but she headed for his desk and stood between the two uncomfortable-looking chairs there, knowing how awkward and out-of-place she was in her gym clothes in this pit of rich contempt. 

“Brienne Tarth,” he said, not inviting her to sit. She sat anyway and Tywin's eyes tightened. The chairs were even more uncomfortable to sit in than she'd thought, and too small for her size. “There's an interview coming out soon about the Women of F1.”

She felt a little of the tension ease; he must have called her here because of the interview. “Have you seen it?” 

“Melisandre sent it to both me and Ned Stark. We get final approval of these things.” He glanced down at a paper on his desk, pushed it aside. 

“Will you let it run?” she asked quietly. Besides the section with Jaime, it had been a good interview, addressing important points about girls and women and the sport. 

“Yes. You made the company look good, and she's taken out all of the questions about you and Jaime.”

Brienne blanched. “She left them in?”

“She wanted to. She argued rather forcefully for it. I made her take them out.” His intent couldn't be more clear: Tywin Lannister always got what he wanted. “Are you enjoying your work here?” he went on and she rubbed her now sweaty palms on her bare knees. 

“Yes.” She almost called him sir but reminded herself he had only earned politeness and not reverence. It was astonishing to her that this cold, cruel man could be Jaime's father. 

“Do you wish to continue working here?”

Her stomach dropped. “Yes,” she said again, feeling significantly less confident. 

“Yet you directly disobeyed my order to not fuck my son.” 

The vulgarity of it from Tywin's mouth shocked her. Fucking was what they were doing, but he made it sound like it was some low-grade porno. 

_Isn't it?_ she thought. Cheap motel rooms and sneaking around; she had feelings for Jaime but they'd never talked about anything beyond the physical; her choice, she knew, not his. 

“I don't know what you're referring to,” she managed to say from some stoic, hardened part of her hidden deep inside. Her neck heated from the lie to her boss and Tywin lifted an eyebrow in disdain. She fleetingly recalled Jaime saying “you've met my father, haven't you?” at the track on Tarth. 

“I would suggest you not add lying to your offenses, Ms. Tarth. You're walking a very thin line right now as it is.”

She swallowed. “What does it matter if we are? We're being discreet. Jaime came in first the last two races so it's not affecting his driving. Why do you care who he takes to his bed?” 

“You have been good for his season,” Tywin said and for a moment he sounded almost angry, though it made no sense. Even Tywin couldn't be mad that Jaime was doing well when it only helped the whole team in the Constructor Championship. “But you have not been discreet.” He turned his monitor to show her a photo of them at the Lazy Eel Motel in White Harbor, Jaime holding her hand to his chest when they'd stood out front after their night together. They both looked rumpled and happy; anyone looking at this photo would know what they'd just been doing. 

“Were you spying on us?” she asked, horrified. 

“I'm protecting my investment. It's all legal, my team of lawyers is certain of it.” 

Tyrion was on that team of lawyers, she thought. Had he known? 

“So what are you going to do about it?” She felt reckless with fury, her privacy violated even if it was technically legal. 

Tywin clasped his hands together on top of his desk looking for all the world like a disciplinary school principal. “It's not what I'm going to do, it's what you are. You will immediately cease all non-work relations with my son. If it's not a required part of your job, then you have no reason to talk to him. No attending functions together, no non-work lunches, and certainly no illicit meetups in hotels.” 

He was effectively cutting her out of Jaime's life except for the places even he couldn't reach. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She folded her own hands in her lap and stared at him with her best coolly composed face. 

“You can't do this. I can't just stop hanging out with him entirely. Whatever else we are to each other we are friends, Mr. Lannister, and I will not lose my friend.”

“Who do you think will be his race engineer after you're gone?”

“He's winning,” she said, though she hated the slight tremble in her voice. “They'll come out of the woodwork to help him now.” 

“And you think he will continue to drive for me when I tell him I fired you? When I let the media fight over the photos we've taken?”

She blanched, remembered Jaime saying he'd quit if it was his fault she was let go. How much worse would it be if Tywin dragged them through the mud when he did it? 

“Mr. Lannister-”

“You've had your fun, Ms. Tarth. It's time to grow up and put an end to this. Surely you know it would never work out between you anyway. Someday you might even thank me for stopping this now.” 

Brienne bit down hard on her lip trying not to lose control in front of this hateful man. “Jaime will ask why. I can't just cut him off with no reason.” 

“If you tell him it was my doing how long do you think it will take before he's unemployed or in jail?”

She swallowed down the rising bile. She'd never convince Jaime to stay the course and finish out his season with Lannister Corp if he knew his father had any part in her distance, if he felt her reputation were truly at stake. He was too full of righteous anger at his father, too quick to foolish action even when it put everything he'd ever wanted on the line. 

“If you don't want to ruin his remarkable run,” Tywin pressed on relentlessly, “I suggest you make him believe this came from you, Ms. Tarth. If I have to get involved, it will not end happily. Are we understood?”

“Why are you doing this?” 

Tywin stilled and for a moment there was a fierceness in him that reminded her of Jaime. “Everything I do, I do for Lannister Corp. Now I ask again: do you understand what I am telling you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, trapped. Tywin nodded, dismissing her, and the bald man came back into the room. 

“Take her back from where she came, Varys,” Tywin said, his attention already somewhere else, caring not at all about the world crumbling at Brienne's feet. 

“This way my dear,” Varys said, leading her back out of the office. When the door had closed behind them, he patted her arm gently and then handed her her phone. “I suggest you do what he's told you. It will not be so bad. It's not like you are already in love.” 

_Then why does it feel like my heart is breaking?_ Brienne thought as she followed him back to the gym in a dull gray haze.

* * *

Brienne texted Sandor when Varys left her alone again, begging him to come get her and take her home, claiming she was sick. She was – her heart a pounding ache in her chest – but it was a sickness no doctor could heal. 

When Sandor responded that he was out front, Brienne gathered up her things and hurried outside. Jaime's bike was parked in its usual place, a gleaming reminder of what his father had just demanded of her, and she pressed her lips together and let herself silently into the car. Sandor glanced at her in the rearview mirror, and narrowed his eyes. 

“You look like shit,” he said unceremoniously and Brienne burst into tears. His eyes went wide in alarm. “What the fuck?” Sandor turned in his seat and looked back at her and she waved him off with one hand, covered her face with the other. 

“It's okay,” she wailed and she would have laughed at the absurdity of it if everything didn't hurt so much, if it didn't feel like her insides would never untwist. 

“You're not sick, are you?”

“No,” she choked out. 

Sandor turned back around and put the car into drive. “Then I know just what to do.” 

Fifteen minutes later they were sitting side-by-side at the far edge of a dirty bar. He'd taken her to a hole in the wall that didn't even have a name and she suspected also didn't have a liquor license, but the whiskey was cheap and burned her throat when she drank it and it eased some of the burning in her heart. When they'd entered the bartender hadn't even blinked at the two of them, just got out two tumblers without Sandor even asking and set the drinks down and left them alone. Brienne knew she looked awful – she'd always been an ugly crier – but there was no mirror behind the bar and at least she and Sandor were a matching set in that regard. 

“You don't need to talk about it,” he said after he'd finished his first whiskey in silence and picked up his second. “But if there's someone you need run over with a car, I've got a spare.” 

Brienne laughed a little, a dry, sad sound. “He'd just pay to have you murdered,” she sighed. 

Sandor set his glass down and looked at her for the first time since they'd entered the bar. “How'd you get on Tywin Lannister's bad side?”

Brienne took another gulp of her whiskey, gasped at the fire in her chest. “I had sex with his son,” she said, and Sandor choked on his drink. 

“Which one?”

“Jaime.”

“Fuck me,” he mused. “I thought it would have been Tyrion.” 

She looked at him, confused. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought you were smarter than to get involved with Lannister.” 

“I guess I'm not,” she said, staring at her drink in despair. Her phone beeped and when she checked it was a message from Jaime asking 'where are you?' Brienne groaned. 

“You can't put milk back into a cow, so why does Tywin care that you two fucked?”

She grimaced. “I wish I knew. But I have to break it off with Jaime or else the whole season will be ruined. I can't do that to him. He's so close to winning, I know he can do this.” 

“Why don't you let him decide?”

“Decide what? If I tell him his father had anything to say about this he'll be gone by the end of the week.” Unemployed or in jail, Tywin had said, and she worried it would almost certainly be the latter. “No, I have to end it so he doesn't know. So he thinks it's what I want.” She remembered their sweaty nights in cheap motels, Jaime's constant conflicted embrace and dismay at having to keep things quiet, and knew exactly what she would have to do. Brienne's chin trembled again and she pressed the heel of her hands to her eyes. 

“Fucking Lannisters,” Sandor grumbled. 

They finished their drinks, leaving Jaime's message unanswered on her phone.

* * *

Two hours later, Sandor left Brienne at her apartment, surprisingly mostly sober, having nursed her second drink for most of it. 

“See you tomorrow?” he asked and she nodded. 

“Thank you.”

“Just don't tell anyone about this and we'll be square,” he muttered, getting back in the car and driving away. 

Brienne trudged up to her apartment, let herself in and felt her breath hitch again at the sight of the cheerful lilacs on her table. Jaime had sent another message a few minutes after the first one back at the bar, clearly worried when she hadn't responded or shown herself in the office. 

'Wrench? Everything ok?'

She'd responded 'feeling sick. going home' and shut off her phone. When she turned it on again in her apartment now, there was another message from Jaime. 

'Sorry to hear that. Can I bring some chicken soup?'

'No' she typed, standing in the middle of her apartment. 'Don't want you to catch anything before next race.'

'I've already got all your cooties' he responded astonishingly fast; he must have been waiting by his phone. She swallowed around a fresh lump in her throat. 

'Please don't come' she sent, blinking hard. 

There was nothing for a long minute and then: 'Fine.' 

Brienne stared listlessly around her apartment, went to change her clothes and then sat on her couch late into the night not watching the television as it turned from weeknight dramas to late night shows to paid commercials. 

When she woke up with the sun, bleary-eyed and exhausted, Brienne considered just calling in sick for the whole week, but they had Highgarden in a week and a half and she was doing this to help Jaime win; she couldn't abandon her work in addition to him. Besides, it wasn't like he would just leave her alone to sit in the dark in her pajamas, not responding to his texts and not letting him come help her. Better to get it all over quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. 

Too bad when she did it would be her heart bleeding all over the floor. 

Sandor was quieter than usual when he picked her up, though he shoved coffee and a donut wordlessly in her direction when she came downstairs. When they arrived at the Lannister Corp offices he turned back to face her. 

“I know lots of bars,” he said and she smiled a little, pressed a hand quickly to his forearm in thanks before getting out of the car. 

Jaime's motorcycle was already parked in the otherwise empty lot. She exhaled shakily at the sight of it, remembering the feel of him in her arms, their bodies merged together on the bike, in the bed. Brienne had hoped she'd have some time to gather her thoughts, to figure out the right time and place to talk to him, but he'd come in early, too, and she knew it was for her. 

She found him in his office, sitting at his desk and staring idly at his closed laptop. When she entered, his head jerked up quickly, his eyes searching her face. 

“Feeling better?” he asked in a neutral voice. 

“No,” she said quietly. She shut the door and Jaime's eyes widened, his fingers nervously drumming on the desktop. Brienne closed the blinds, too, leaving them with just the light from his floor lamp shading them in warm yellow. 

He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off quickly, suddenly terrified if she didn't begin she never would. “We have to stop this.” 

Jaime went utterly still, except for a sudden storm in his eyes. “Stop what?” he finally asked. 

“Our...relationship.” 

“Why? What happened? Did someone say something?”

“No,” she said, forcing out the lie, praying he believed her. “It's a distraction.” 

“I've come in first the last two races, it's not that distracting.” 

“It's too hard,” she whispered. “I'm not getting enough sleep. I'm worried all the time. I'm not happy.” Her voice broke on that, the truth of it overwhelming her. “And neither are you. We need to stop.” 

“We can cut back,” he said, his brow furrowed. He reached out to her over the desk. “I didn't think it was bothering you this much, I'm sorry if I-”

“No,” she said so sharply his hand dropped to the desk. Somewhere around two am she'd thought she would say he'd needed her too much, but she realized now she couldn't bear to hear him apologizing for something he hadn't done. He pressed his palm hard against the desktop and Brienne stared at where the line of his hand went white with the pressure. “You said if we wanted to stop we could stop, just go back to being coworkers.” 

“You really want to stop?” he asked in a voice hoarse with despair. 

“Yes,” she whispered. 

“Permanently?” 

Tywin's calculating stare, the threat of what he wanted her to say, was like a sword hanging over her, but she choked on the words. “It's just sex,” she managed instead, a truth and a lie at the same time. 

Jaime leaned back in his chair like she'd physically shoved him away, gripping the edge of his desk. “I see.” 

“Jaime, I-”

“No, we had an agreement,” he said in a tone she hadn't heard from him since January. Since before he'd let her see the man desperate to be known that he hid from the rest of the world. “We'll stop, then. Right now. Is there anything else, Tarth?”

Brienne winced and shook her head, blinking back tears. “After the season-”

“We'll see,” he said and she nodded, closing her eyes even as she stood to leave. When she opened them again they stared at each other for a long moment and she willed him to see through it, to realize she didn't want this, not really. She would have given anything to climb into his arms and kiss him and tell him all. But she knew if she did he'd go straight to his father and she couldn't protect him from what would happen next. 

“I'll see you later,” she said, but Jaime didn't say anything, didn't even seem to hear her. Brienne exited and shut the door behind her, and she didn't see him again the rest of that day.

* * *

The next morning, dread like a rock in her stomach, Brienne showed up at work to find Jaime gone. 

“Where is he?” she asked Bronn mid-morning, gesturing at Jaime's office. 

“Who the fuck knows,” Bronn muttered, poking at his keyboard. “At least he's leaving us alone. Hey come check out these stats, this can't be right.” 

On Friday Jaime's office door was still closed, his lights off, no meetings with him on her schedule. 

That afternoon she asked Pod if he knew where Jaime was, and the younger man had shrugged. 

“Maybe he went t-to do interviews? D-did you need him f-for something?”

_Yes_, she thought desperately, but she shook her head no. 

That night Brienne picked at a dinner of butter on toast and sat in her dimly lit apartment trying not to worry. She'd just decided to send Jaime a quick text when her phone rang, Jaime's name lighting up the dark screen. 

“Jaime?” she said, answering on the second ring. “Are you ok? Where are you?”

There was quiet for ten seconds, thirty, just the steady sound of his breathing on the other end, the silence of her apartment on hers. 

“Rosby,” he said finally, startling her, his voice rough like he'd been drinking, or crying. “I think.” 

“Do you need me to send Sandor to get you?”

“No.” He made a wounded noise, something between a moan and a stifled cry. “I shouldn't do this, I know I shouldn't do this, but I can't stop thinking about you.” 

Brienne gripped the phone tighter to her ear. “You promised we could go back,” she pleaded. 

“I was an idiot. I can't do it. Can you?”

_Say yes_, she urged herself, but she couldn't make that lie pass her teeth. “Just focus on the racing,” she said instead. “We'll just focus on that.” 

“I didn't even get to kiss you one more time,” he said, desperate. “I thought I'd get to kiss you. Fuck, Brienne, all I wanted was one more taste of you. Let me have one more night knowing that's all and then I'll let you go.” 

“Jaime,” she whispered, her whole body tingling, aching for him. “We can't.” 

“Then talk to me,” he begged, “let me pretend one more time that we're not just done.” She suddenly pictured him sprawled on the bed, gripping himself, and she knew it was wrong, but she couldn't stop her breath from speeding up, heat flooding through her. “_Please_.”

“Alright,” she managed, swallowing hard.

“Can I tell you what I would do, if you would let me fuck you one last time?”

“Yes,” she breathed, lying back on her couch. She put her phone on speaker and set it on the coffee table near her head, shut off the last light in her apartment so only the city lights shining through her window pale and distant illuminated the room. “What would you do?” she asked, her voice deep and needy even to her own ears. 

“Did you put me on speakerphone? Are you touching yourself, Brienne?” She could almost see the fire in his eyes. 

She rubbed her fingers over her own stomach, dragging them up between her breasts. “Yes,” she whispered. 

“Gods,” he groaned, “I wish I was there. I had to leave, you know, go so far from you I couldn't make it back or I'd be at your doorstep. I'd planned to bring you to my apartment on Tuesday. I could just see you sitting up on the counter, my tongue deep inside you like a fucking five course meal just for me. I don't give a shit about my neighbors so you could have screamed as loud as you wanted. And I would have made you scream, Brienne.”

She gasped and sucked her fingers, then rubbed them over her nipples, wishing it was Jaime's rough tongue. 

“When you were done there we would move to my couch. It's bigger than yours, and soft. You'd kneel at my feet and you'd-” he moaned low into the phone and she heard the movement of his arm against the sheets. “You'd wrap your mouth around my cock,” he managed, panting. “Would you do that?”

She'd wanted to their second time together on Tarth, had been hungry for the weight of him on her tongue, but Jaime had stopped her, gentle but firm. Brienne had been filled then with her own power to make him weak; now she hated that she could. “Yes,” she said, her whole body on fire as she slid her fingers down below her waistband into her own slick heat. 

“I know you would,” he whispered and he sounded miserable. “I'm sorry I pushed too hard, that I ruined everything.” 

“Jaime,” she murmured, her heart cracking. “It wasn't you.”

“It's always me.” 

Brienne trembled with rage at Tywin and every other Lannister, at a racing world that had taken Jaime's young, hurting heart and broken it so completely. She was helpless against the overpowering weight of it all, unable to shield him even now as his race engineer, his friend. “What else would we do?” she asked, reaching for anything to distract him. 

“What?”

“If I were there, after I'd finished with your, your cock,” her voice dropped but he groaned in her ear. “It would be wet from my mouth. But I didn't let you come yet, so what would you do?”

“Brienne-”

“You'd take me to your bed,” she hurried on. “I'm sure you have silk sheets and they would be cool on our skin. We'd be sweaty and hot and it would feel good. Not as good as it would feel to have you thrust into me though,” she said and he whined over the speaker. “Imagine how I feel. I'm so wet for you, Jaime.” That wasn't a lie; her fingers were soaked pressed against herself. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes, gods, you're drenched. You're always so ready for me.” 

“Stroke yourself faster, Jaime” she commanded him, her face burning with lust and embarrassment. “As fast as you would be fucking me.” 

The noises coming from the speaker were dirtier than any erotic dream she'd ever have. “Are you doing it?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he gasped. “Yes.” 

“Good. You're so good for me,” she breathed and Jaime cried out on the line, inarticulate and lost. She waited for him to quiet, for his heavy breathing to slow down. 

“Are you still there?” he asked after a minute, everything but exhaustion stripped from his tone. 

“Yes.” 

“Do you want me to-”

“No.” She pulled the phone back onto her chest, cradling it. “We can't do this again.” 

“I know.” 

They were silent together on the phone for another minute and heading into a second when Brienne finally said, “Jaime?”

“Yes?”

_I love you_, she wanted to say, her heart crushed under the unleashed force of the feelings that had been there much longer than she'd wanted to admit. _I'm a fool and I love you._ “Get some sleep, ok? I'll see you at work at Monday.” 

She worried he'd hung up, but he eventually sighed into the phone, shaky and sad. “Ok. See you Monday,” he murmured, and then the line went dead and Brienne was left alone with a yearning she had no idea how to ease.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I'm sorry. Please enjoy this extremely sweet modern AU JB one-shot, [meet me in the afterglow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847204) by hotaruyy as a palate cleanser.


	16. September (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime wanted to kneel at her feet, bury his head in her lap and beg her to try again, but the ride home Sunday had cleared more than his headache. She'd said it was just sex, but it had never been just that to him. He'd loved her since Tarth for sure and probably since January when she'd stepped out of the garage and hated him for the reasons he'd deserved to be hated, and he was incapable of keeping it private. If it had only been physical for her, if the way her eyes had burned with joy had been her body and not her heart, then it was better she stop it now. He wasn't going to love her less with more exposure; he had no immunity to Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the shortest chapter of the story so far, but I think we'll all be ok with that.

Jaime had thought he'd known the worst of loss, had been through the most difficult moment of his life back when he'd killed Aerys and the world had turned its back on him. But showing up at Lannister Corp Monday morning, walking into the offices to see Brienne at her desk, to watch her look up with aching sadness in her eyes, and to just nod and walk past her into his office felt like Aerys had caught up with him and he was burning up from the inside, everything good about the last few months turning to ash. 

It was worse when she knocked tentatively on his door later and said, “we have a meeting to talk about Highgarden.” 

He gestured at what he'd come to think of as her chair and she sat in it, looking at him cautiously. Saturday had passed in a blur of drinking and smoking in a motel in Rosby that was a step below the Lazy Eel, and Sunday he'd ridden home with a pounding headache that throbbed in time with his hurting heart. 

“I'm sorry about Friday,” he said quietly, and she flushed, the familiar red staining her cheeks. 

“It's fine.” 

Jaime wanted to kneel at her feet, bury his head in her lap and beg her to try again, but the ride home Sunday had cleared more than his headache. She'd said it was just sex, but it had never been just that to him. He'd loved her since Tarth for sure and probably since January when she'd stepped out of the garage and hated him for the reasons he'd deserved to be hated, and he was incapable of keeping it private. If it had only been physical for her, if the way her eyes had burned with joy had been her body and not her heart, then it was better she stop it now. He wasn't going to love her less with more exposure; he had no immunity to Brienne. 

But the deep lines between her brows suggested she was telling them both at least a partial lie. Perhaps after the season was done they could talk and she would change her mind. He could tell her how she was the first thing he thought about every morning, even on race day; the only thing he dreamed about at night, even with the World Championship so near. And for now he would give her her space and pray that someone else didn't step in to fill it before he could have another chance. 

“Do you have notes to start?” he asked, turning his monitor so she could see it, too, the track already on the screen. 

Brienne looked so grateful he thought she might cry, and he gave her a small nod of understanding. 

The rest of the week passed as tentatively and distant as that meeting, the two of them only talking when they had to, adrift in a sea between lovers and friends, unable to reach either shore. He heard her laugh only once, in response to something Pod said in the garage, and when he looked over to see her happy she immediately stilled under his hungry stare. 

In the mobile garage at Highgarden on Friday, Bronn sauntered over to him while Jaime stood in a corner holding his helmet hard against his chest while he watched Brienne arguing with the engineers. 

“I've changed my mind,” Bronn said, standing at Jaime's side and following his gaze, his arms folded over his chest. 

“About what?”

“About you and Chief. You should fuck her.” 

Jaime turned on the other man, furious. “That's not funny,” he snarled. 

Bronn lifted an eyebrow, an expression on his normally disinterested face that meant he was stunned at the response. “I don't know what your fucking problem is Lannister, but whatever this is can't go on. Put us all out of our misery and just do it.” 

His heart raging like a trapped animal in his chest, Jaime shoved past Bronn to head for his driver's room, Bronn's offended “hey!” echoing off the walls behind him.

* * *

“Radio check,” Brienne said in his ear later as Jaime pulled out for first free practice. He tightened his grip on the wheel.

“I hear you.” 

She was quiet then and so was he, neither knowing what to say or how to say it. It was like that through the second free practice that afternoon, the last one Saturday morning, and all three qualifying rounds: Brienne calling for radio check, Jaime saying he'd heard her, and then as little communication as possible. 

Because he was in the lead in the standings, the IAF kept asking him to be part of the pre-race interview groups, but he begged off that Sunday, claiming he was feeling unwell, and he sat in his hotel as long as he could until waiting any longer would have made him late for the driver's parade and weigh-in. 

Highgarden's driver parade consisted of a long flatbed decorated lavishly with flowers, like they were a float in a holiday parade. The theme this year was 'Love of the Sport,' and there was an abundance of hearts in the decorations that felt bitingly ironic. 

Jaime climbed up and stood where the race director pointed him, glanced up briefly at Addam when he joined him. “They let me pick my spot,” Addam explained, smiling a little. “And you looked like you could use a friend.” 

Jaime swallowed hard, glancing down and away to hide the rush of gratitude that weakened his iron-willed resolve to not cry. But he nodded a little and Addam patted his shoulder warmly. 

As the parade got under way, Jaime and Addam waving at the cheering crowd, Addam softly asked, “anything you want to talk about?” 

“No,” Jaime said firmly, acknowledging a crowd of fans wearing his colors and number and yelling his name in wild voices. He'd noticed these groups getting bigger with every win, until Lannister #8 was the most prominent fan gear at every race. Some of them had even started chanting Kingslayer as though it were a reward and not a punishment. It made Jaime's skin crawl with unease. 

Addam grinned and blew kisses to a small group of women who had his face on their t-shirts and their resounding screams made Jaime smile a little. “Anything to do with your race engineer?”

Jaime shot him a glare. “I said I don't want to talk about it.” 

“Mm.” They held on as the truck took a sharp corner and then started waving again when the next set of bleachers came into view. “Three more wins and you've basically locked the championship down for the season, isn't it?” Jaime nodded. “Yet you've looked so unhappy this weekend that a reporter asked me this morning at the scrum if a family member of yours had died.” 

Jaime rubbed his face, suddenly so tired of all of it: the pressure he put on himself to win, the pressure the media put on them to give over every moment of their lives, the pressure of his own demanding heart. “I appreciate what you're doing but I need this to be private,” he said quietly. 

Addam studied him as they went around another corner. “All right. But if you need someone to talk to, I'm just a few garages down.” 

As they rumbled down the straightaway, Jaime asked, “how are you feeling?” 

Addam had missed Oldtown on doctor's orders, given it had occurred less than a week since he was hospitalized for the crash at White Harbor. He looked all right now at first glance, just the ghost of bruising on his forehead when Jaime peered closely. 

“This might be my last season,” Addam said, sighing. “I've been getting headaches since the crash, I get tired more easily.” His gaze darkened a little. “It was such a stupid thing, too; I braked a little too late and hit a piece of tire someone had left on the track and turned just the wrong way and that was it.” 

“Aren't you on contract for another year?”

“The money's not worth it if I'm not alive to enjoy it.” 

“What will you do, if you stop racing?”

Addam lifted his face to the sunshine, his features calm and at ease. “Live.” 

They took the rest of the track in silence, waving to the fans, Jaime even able to put on a smile when needed, and when they tromped down off the truck at the end, he gave Addam a grateful look, which Addam accepted with a nod and a smile and a “see you on the track.” 

Jaime caught Brienne watching them, her brow furrowed with worry. Since she'd told him the non-work part of their relationship was through he hadn't once talked to her just because he wanted to, and the urge to saunter over, tease her until her face smoothed and then crinkled again in annoyance at him, was almost unbearable. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her in front of everyone. He must have been telegraphing it because she reddened and turned away, giving him only the rigid line of her back in response. 

He missed Tarth, when they'd been together and happy; when the dark of her small bedroom and the clean anonymity of his hotel room had been enough to keep the rest of the world at bay. The world had seemed softer there, its sharpness blunted by the warm comfort of Brienne's arms. 

She engaged Bronn in conversation, pointing out something on the screen and then leaning past him to talk to an engineer and Jaime shook his head, pulling himself back to the hard-edged present. Jaime looked around, taking in his crew dressed in their race day jumpsuits, chatting idly while they did warm-up exercises and checked their tools, and the small crowd of random people that always bustled about the garage on race day: trainers and engineers and operations staff and photographers, all with somewhere to be and something to do, all working towards the goal of getting him and Lancel onto the track. Lancel was in deep conversation with Theodan over his car, pointing at the wing and frowning, Kevan watching and nodding solemnly. And in the recess of the garage, Jaime saw his father, who had his cold, hard eyes on Brienne, considering her as a snake would its prey. Jaime felt a flame of anger ignite in his stomach. 

Tywin slowly turned his head and met Jaime's burning stare, and his father smiled a little, an ugly, victorious thing that Jaime did not understand. It filled him with dread, made every muscle in his body tense and his fists clench at his side. But then Brienne was there in front of him, her face unusually pale, blocking his view of Tywin. 

“It's time for weigh-in,” she said, her eyes darting all over, unable to settle. 

“Is something wrong?”

She jerked her head back, shook it furiously. “No. Why?”

He peered over her shoulder but Tywin was gone. “Are you ready for this?” he asked, bringing his attention back to her, asking her the question he'd asked her at the start of every race, but meaning it in a hundred different ways this time. 

Brienne nodded, and he saw her hand twitch towards him before falling back to her side. “You've got this,” she said and he laughed a little, a wry, bitter chuckle. 

“I have almost nothing,” he said. “This least of all.” Jaime turned on his heel and headed for the weigh-in area, unable to be so near her but still so far away for another moment longer.

* * *

“Brienne!” Melisandre was in the small pack of reporters that had caught Brienne heading into Harrenhal for qualis the following Saturday, trapping her just outside the paddock where she could have escaped their questions. “How has the response been to the interview you did with Arya?”

“Very supportive,” she said. “I've had lots of emails and letters from women and girls since it aired, all happy to see the problem addressed and hopeful to make their own marks. Thank you again for giving us the platform.” 

Melisandre smiled knowingly and Peck waved his hand to get her attention. 

“How do you feel about Jaime's chances this weekend?”

“The same way I feel every weekend: that he can win.” 

“Why isn't he doing interviews?” Bonifer Hasty asked. He was an old reporter that she recalled used to be visible at all the Stormlands tracks and now seemed to mostly haunt Harrenhal and the surrounding areas. 

“This is a very important time for him, he's been putting in extra work to make sure he leaves it all on the track trying to win the championship.” 

“It seems he's been willing to make the sacrifices needed to win this year. Have you had to make the same in your first year in F1?” Bonifer asked and Brienne felt her careful smile fall. 

_If only you knew_, she thought. “Every Formula One professional makes a hundred sacrifices in any season, regardless of what their role is and where their team is placed. Why don't you do a segment on that?” she directed at Melisandre, who raised her eyebrows and then seemed to type something into her phone. “Speaking of which, I don't want to sacrifice my morning coffee, so I need to go,” she said, and the small crowd laughed appreciatively, parting to let her pass. 

Brienne was shaking only a little when the paddock door closed behind her, feeling better about that brief media encounter than any she'd done all season. Without Jaime constantly at her side, stepping in to field questions and protect her from her fears, she'd been slowly learning to handle at least the easy parts, and some of the faces were becoming familiar, their questions a routine cadence she was learning to meet. She'd never be good at it, but at least she didn't fumble the simple ones any more. 

She was learning to handle attention in general, especially after Melisandre's segment with her and Arya had aired the Monday after Jaime's nail-biting win in Highgarden. Loras had come in second in that race, so close to Jaime's wheels Brienne had been worried they'd crash before they crossed the finish line. But with Robb taking third he fell even further behind Jaime in the championship race, and while Brienne had been prepared for the onslaught of interview requests on that, she'd been overwhelmed by the response to the interview with Melisandre, both from strangers and those she knew. 

Monday night, alone in her apartment, she'd received texts from her father, Podrick, and Bronn, just as she had back in January, but there'd been more this time, too: Argella using internet slang Brienne had had to look up; Arryk who said he'd gotten her number from her dad; Arya herself who Brienne exchanged a flurry of excited messages with. None of those were as surprising as the ones from Sansa, who'd complimented her on the color of her outfit and the way she'd answered questions; or the applause emojis from Willem, who she hadn't even known had her number. The next morning the crew had been waiting for her, all of them gathered around, whistling and clapping loudly when she walked into the garage, even some of the engineers and Lancel's crew having joined in. Brienne had flushed as red as the car at all of the attention, but her heavy heart lightened a little at the sea of smiling faces. 

When she went to see Jaime that morning to discuss Harrenhal he'd looked up from his computer where she heard herself talking about her experience on his crew and his eyes were shining in admiration. “You were fucking incredible,” he said and she had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from wrapping them around him. They hadn't touched since Oldtown, when they'd been snuggled together watching TV in bed. If it had been a thrilling impossibility to keep apart when they were secretly together, it was a brutal marathon to keep working together when all that would help was being apart.

_Five more races_, she thought, everything after that a terrifyingly uncertain future. Lannister Corp hadn't approached her to renew her contract, and neither had Jaime, of course. Hyle had asked again a few days after the interview, urgent in his email as though he was worried someone else would swoop in first, and she had in the dark of night seriously considered it for the first time. Being near Jaime but not with him was not making her love him less; if anything, his quiet dedication, the way he kept out of her way so she could do her work without worrying about him, only made her heart more tender. She would never feel this way about Hyle and that would make the work easier. For both her and Jaime's sakes she might have to make one last, hard decision. 

But all of that could wait until after the end of the season. Brienne was focused now only on getting Jaime the world championship he deserved. Nothing else mattered: not her future career, not her immediate prospects, and not her heart. And as her focus turned to the next race, she knew she'd need to be at her best. 

Harrenhal was by far Brienne's least favorite track of the season. The track designer had, in a misplaced fit of preserving history, built it to wind around and through the crumbling ruins of what had once been the largest castle in Westeros. Even as old and broken down as they were, the ruins were still enormous, hulking beasts that obscured every good view, whether watching on TV or in person. It was often impossible to tell what was happening as a fan, and even now as a race engineer, having spent all week peering at reruns of past races trying to make sense of the track with the map in her hand, she was uncertain how best to help Jaime with his race. Drivers drove in and out of view, whole corners were hidden between tall, black rock walls, and there were few straightaways that Lannister Corp's increasingly fast cars could take advantage of. 

So when Jaime's car slipped between Euron and Oberyn during Q3 and then all three cars disappeared from view she quickly scanned the screens trying to remember which one he'd come back on when his voice cut loud into her headset saying “fuck fuck fuck fuck” and her hands clenched on the gantry's counter. 

“What is it?” she asked, finally finding Euron and Oberyn but not Jaime. 

“I crashed,” he said. “_FUCK!_”

“Can you make it back to the garage?”

“No, the front is ruined. Fucking Greyjoy-”

“We'll review the tape,” she said, cutting him off to keep him from saying something on the public feed he might regret later. They were yellow flagging his sector now, she saw, and the retrieval truck was on its way. “Hang tight,” she told him, “they're coming to get you.” 

“I don't know if it can be fixed by tomorrow. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. We'll take a look, I'm sure it's not as bad as you think. Just stay somewhere safe until they get to you.” 

“Fuck. Brienne-”

“It's fine,” she repeated, keeping her tone soothing. “We'll fix it.” 

By the time the car had been delivered back at the garage, she was feeling less confident. Jaime had been knocked at an awkward angle into one of the kerbs, jumped it and slammed the right side of his car into the walls, crumpling the whole thing. They'd have to build the machine back up from his spare monocoque, a process that would take hours and hours of concentrated work; a late night for her and the crew as they rebuilt the machine in time for a re-scrutineering check in the morning.

Jaime stood slumped and defeated as Brienne examined the damage and made notes on a pad of paper before murmuring to Pod about getting approval from IAF to break the curfew in order to repair everything. Pod ran off to start that process with Kevan and she approached Jaime, standing by his side, facing the broken car. 

“What happened?”

“Euron,” he spit out. “He took the corner too tight and I couldn't brake fast enough before he'd tagged me, sent me into the wall.” 

“You're still starting at p-3,” she said. “That's good.”

“You know how hard it is to overtake here. I needed p-1.”

“You'll be fine. Oberyn is at p-1 and Robb is at p-2. You're better at managing tires than Oberyn is, which means Robb is your only real competition.” 

“If I don't win this-”

“Then you have four more races to lock down the championship. Just place top ten and in two weeks it's yours.” 

“If I don't crash again.”

“Jaime.” He glanced up at her, his face twisted and bitter. “I believe in you,” she said quietly. “I know you can do this. Just focus on the race in front of you; everything else we'll deal with as it comes.” 

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I've watched you race for all of your life and this is the best you've ever been. One unlucky spinout isn't going to change the weight of everything you've done this year.” 

He huffed and dragged his hands through his hair. “Maybe everything is ending,” he said, so soft she almost couldn't catch it, so sad it felt like an arrow in her heart. He stalked away back to his driver's room and she let him go, unsure whether to follow. If Tywin had wanted to undercut his son's self-confidence, he couldn't have picked a better way to do it than having her break Jaime's heart two months before the end of the season. 

But Tywin gained nothing from ruining Jaime's season. Lancel had no chance of winning the championship, and it was Jaime who was carrying the entire team on his back to a constructor's championship. Which meant Tywin just genuinely hated Brienne enough he'd rather she leave his son alone and put the whole season at risk than let them be happy for three short months. 

She wondered if he'd started hating her when she'd stood up to him at Lannisport, or if it had started from the first moment they met. Either way, they weren't things Brienne would change even if she could. She was here only for Jaime; Tywin and the rest of them could go fuck themselves. 

That anger fueled her through the rest of the hectic afternoon and late into the evening as they rebuilt the car, a mishmash of 11,000 pieces to be arranged and bolted on. Though some had already been attached to the tub of the monocoque, there was still so much work to do she felt cross-eyed and exhausted by the time they had finished in the middle of the night, her fingers aching from the concentrated work. 

She'd sent Pod and the others home ten minutes ago and was taking one last look at everything, testing pieces she hadn't already tried, examining connections to make sure they were true. As Brienne stood outside the paddock and stretched her aching back, she heard noises from the garage next door. She hadn't realized they were staying late as well, and she peered into their dimly lit paddock curiously. They'd all been so consumed with getting Jaime's car built on time that it was possible she had missed a crash by one of Golden Company's cars, but she doubted it. She saw three men come out of the garage, talking quietly until Ramsay Bolton's sharp, sneering laugh cut the air. 

Brienne had had little interaction with most of the other drivers through the season; Robb and Jon Snow more than most as Direwolf's garage was always next door to Lannister Corp's at the track. Golden Company was always on Lannister Corp's other side, but she hardly saw Harry and she'd made a point to avoid Ramsay whenever she did see him, not liking the look of his pale, mean eyes. Uneasy, Brienne avoided him now, until she recognized the tall, gaunt form of Hoat. 

It wasn't entirely unusual for crews to mix after hours, though it mostly happened at bars and parties and almost never at the track. The third man stepped into and out of the light and she felt a hard thud of recognition in her chest. It was Martyn Lannister, and he was laughing with Ramsay and Hoat about something she couldn't hear. Brienne frantically tried to recall if Hoat had said anything about Martyn during the months they'd worked together, but the man had kept to himself and Brienne had been happy to let him, too busy to spend time worrying about him when she had racing and eventually Jaime to distract her. 

The three men leaned in together under the light and then shook hands before splitting apart, and Brienne hesitated, uncertain whether to follow or let them be. They'd only been talking, laughing; if not for who they were she would have paid them little mind at all. It wasn't like Martyn had been banned from the tracks; he'd just been fired from his job. If the man loved racing, of course he would want to still be a part of things. Maybe Ramsay had even hired him. As soon as Martyn had been gone from Lannister Corp Brienne had put him out of her head as well, relieved to not have to think about him again. 

_You're just tired_, she told her anxious heart. _I'll get some sleep and tomorrow I can ask Hoat about it._ Brienne lingered for a few minutes more, but when nothing else seemed out of place she called for a taxi and struggled to not fall asleep on the short drive back to the hotel.

* * *

Brienne was onsite late the next morning, having slept through her alarm, and by the time she got settled and had had a chance to check-in with the crew and Jaime, to see Hoat working diligently with the rest of them, the absurdity of her suspicion seemed even stronger. Martyn was nowhere to be seen, either near them or in Golden Company's garage, and she didn't have time to look for or care about Ramsay. Jaime was in a tightly ferocious mood and she needed to figure out how to settle him before he got in the car.

“I smoked four cigarettes this morning,” he told her when she found him in his driver's room. “None of them helped.” 

A few weeks ago she would have bothered him about the smoking, but she let it lie today. “Do you want to go over the strategy again?”

“No I do not want to go over the _fucking_ strategy.” 

She tamped down a hot flash of annoyance. “I think we can do one pit stop today.” 

“Hooray for us.” 

“Everyone else is going to need two,” she pressed on, “but you can get more life out of those mediums than anyone I know. Which means you'll end on the hards. It'll slow you down, but there's not any straightaway worth talking about here.” 

He slumped in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest like a sullen teenager. “Then why are we talking about it?”

“Fuck off,” she spit, the last thread of her strained rope snapping. His head jerked up, his eyes narrowing. 

He looked ready to fight as he leaned towards her. “What did you say?” 

“You don't think it hurts me too, to come into work every day and see you? To have to smell your cologne and see your face and remind myself I'm just here to work?” The conversation was quickly spiraling out of her control as Jaime stood slowly, his arms at his sides. “We were both in this, Jaime, and now we're both not and we have to deal with the stupid fucking decision we made back on Tarth.” 

“You regret it?”

“_Yes_!” she shouted, angry tears in her eyes. “I didn't want to feel like this!” 

His broad chest heaved with the force of his harsh breathing. “I thought it was just sex.” 

Brienne clamped her mouth shut, realizing she had given away far too much. _Four more races_, she thought in despair. _I couldn't even do that for him._ “It was,” she said, her voice too weak.

“It wasn't,” he insisted and the deepness of his voice curled around her spine, making her shiver. She struggled to think of Tywin, sharp-eyed and demanding she give up everything she wanted so Jaime could have everything instead. 

“It was,” she repeated. He took a step nearer and she put her hand against his chest to stop him. He was on fire under her palm; she could feel the pounding of his heart through her skin. 

“Brienne.” 

Her eyes fluttered closed at the way her name rang like a bell on his lips, the yearning she could not escape crawling up and slowly swallowing her willpower and good intentions. “It was,” she whispered a last time, opening her eyes. They were stuck in that tableau for a long minute: Jaime leaning towards her, her hand against his rising and falling chest holding him at bay. If she faltered for even a moment, she would be lost, and so would everything they had worked for. 

There was a knock at the door. 

With a strength she didn't think she had she pushed him away, and watched the hope in his eyes flicker and burn out. “Come in,” she said, the words torn from her aching throat. 

Podrick opened the door and blinked at them with wide eyes. “Uh.” 

“Is it time for driver parade?” Brienne asked, staring into Pod's confused face, unable to bear the weight of Jaime's anguished stare a second longer. 

“Y-y-yes.” 

“Good. Get him ready.” She pushed past Podrick to escape to the gantry, as far away from Jaime and her heart's desires as she could get.

* * *

By the time the pre-race activities were done and Jaime had been seated in his rumbling car, Brienne had spent twenty minutes hiding in the bathroom and another five staring at herself in the mirror, splashing water over her heated face and wondering how she was going to manage to keep this up for another four races. When she was back in the gantry with her headset on, she hesitated to check in, but finally took a steadying breath and said, “radio check.”

There was nothing for a few seconds and finally Jaime said “check” in a dull voice. 

She'd let him down by letting her emotions escape back in his room, distracting them both. Brienne swallowed and took a steadying breath. She had to control this, control herself, give him the control he would need to make it through the race. “Remember the strategy,” she said. “We're focused on tires.” 

“Right.” 

“Oberyn and Robb are both starting on softs. They'll be faster, but they'll need to pit sooner.” 

“Okay.” 

“Keep it tight before their first pit. You don't need to be first, you just need to hold on. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me the plan, Jaime.” 

“I've got it,” he said, and she was relieved to hear the sharp bite of annoyance. 

“You say that, but then you don't follow the plan, so I'm just making sure you've got it.” 

“Stubborn,” he grumbled, and she felt a bittersweet tug in her heart. 

The lights started flicking on so she let him be, and when it went lights out his car leapt forward confidently, holding onto his p-3 spot with ease as the pack thinned out and separated after the first few corners. Even upset, Jaime listened to her and when Robb and Oberyn both boxed, he pulled ahead into p-1, opening up the car, taking the corners in perfect arcs, and putting extra space between him and his two closest competitors. He was driving a flawless race and she watched as closely as she could as he wound in and out of the view of the cameras. Nearly halfway through she called him in to box. 

Brienne turned to watch the pit crew settle into position, her eyes drawn to Hoat, who fumbled a bit with his pneumatic as he ran around. Jaime's car pulled in, stopping precisely on the line, and it was the crew's turn to leap into action. In just under three seconds they'd replaced all four of his tires with new hards and he was off again, his car tearing out into the pit lane. Brienne watched him go until she could no longer see his car, and she turned back to the screens, saw Jaime exiting out onto the track, a car coming up fast from behind him. 

“Ramsay on your left,” she said, but even as she said the words, she watched Ramsay swerve suddenly towards Jaime, saw Jaime correct sharply to the right, and his right front tire exploded out from under him, the front of his car dipping down abruptly and then the whole thing was rolling until the black walls of Harrenhal brought it to a crashing stop. 

There were gasps all around her, and Brienne stared hard at the wreck on the screen. She blinked and for a moment it was superimposed with an image of the truck Galladon had died in. She had snuck into the junkyard once to see it; the metal had crumpled like a piece of paper and there had been bloodstains still on the seat. Brienne couldn't breathe, couldn't think, she touched the screen and searched desperately for movement from Jaime; she could barely tell where he was in the mess. 

The sharp wail of the ambulance broke her tongue loose and she gripped her headset close to her head with shaking hands. “Jaime, do you hear me? Are you okay?” It was silent on the other end of the line, it was silent along much of the track, the race steward having brought out the red flag already, the crowds watching in hushed horror. The only sound was the piercing cry of the ambulance as it hurried nearer. _It's so sunny outside_, Brienne thought. _Too sunny for him to die._

“Jaime,” Brienne pressed urgently, barely able to speak around the terror clawing at her throat. “Say something. Anything.” 

More silence for endless, agonizing seconds. And then he screamed.


	17. October (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your family is out there, and a few of your racing crew. I saw the crash,” the doctor said solemnly. “You're lucky to be alive and mostly uninjured. The miracle of those cars of yours, I suppose. Just unlucky about, well.” He at least had the sense to look awkward. “Anyway they've been anxious to see you.” 
> 
> How could they see him when he'd disappeared? “I don't want to see anyone,” he muttered. 
> 
> “That's your choice, of course, though we do recommend re-connection with your loved ones as soon as possible after surgery. It helps with the healing.” 
> 
> “I don't have any loved ones,” Jaime said, leaning his head back against the pillow and turning to stare out the half-closed blinds. “I just have family and coworkers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait to post on Sunday but honestly I felt bad about leaving y'all on the cliffhanger, so here you go a day early. Extreme, never-too-many thanks to BrynnMcK for not just her usual spot-on beta'ing skills but pushing extra hard on this and the next two chapters to make it so so SO much better than it was. Any remaining off-ness is mine.

When Jaime woke after surgery, groggy and in pain, not fully aware yet that his life had ended, the doctors rushed to assure him they had done everything they could, their faces drawn and worried, their posture suggesting they did not want to be sued by Tywin Lannister. Jaime only stared down uncomprehending at the empty space where his hand had been. Instead of fingers, he had a drainage tube; instead of a palm he had a compression bandage. The nurses came to check on both with aggravating regularity while he tried to escape through sleep. There was no escaping their cool, efficient fingers as they checked his pulse, his wound, whether he had a concussion or internal bleeding that had been missed. His body felt like one big bleed, everything he knew draining out of him as he lay in bed through the dark night and realized what losing his hand meant. When dawn came he felt emptied and translucent as a ghost. 

The doctor had come in a few hours later looking serious but friendly as he made his rounds. “We've deadened the nerves,” he'd told Jaime. “It should prevent phantom pain, or at least minimize it. But it's important that you start stretching and working your residual limb in a couple of days, make sure you're retaining as much strength and movement as you can.” 

“My what?” Jaime had asked, his mouth dry. He'd had what felt like gallons of water already but it didn't seem to help. (“Blood loss,” the nurse had told him in a bored voice an hour earlier when he'd complained of his thirst while she checked his vitals. “Your body is building new blood. Drink more.”)

“Residual limb. That's what we call what's left of your right arm. Which is most of it, I'm happy to say. We only had to perform a wrist disarticulation. Didn't have to cut into the transradial area at all.” 

Jaime stared down at the flat mattress where his hand should be and did not feel grateful. He didn't feel much of anything. 

“I want off the painkillers,” he said, his throat sore. 

“We'll take that under advisement, Mr. Lannister,” the doctor replied, his smile indicating he'd do no such thing. “In the meantime, you've got visitors waiting to see you. Since you're still in post-op, we can only send in one or two at a time, if you're ready?” 

“Who is it?” he asked. 

“Your family is out there, and a few of your racing crew. I saw the crash,” the doctor said solemnly. “You're lucky to be alive and mostly uninjured. The miracle of those cars of yours, I suppose. Just unlucky about, well.” He at least had the sense to look awkward. “Anyway they've been anxious to see you.” 

How could they see him when he'd disappeared? “I don't want to see anyone,” he muttered. 

“That's your choice, of course, though we do recommend re-connection with your loved ones as soon as possible after surgery. It helps with the healing.” 

“I don't have any loved ones,” Jaime said, leaning his head back against the pillow and turning to stare out the half-closed blinds. “I just have family and coworkers.” 

The doctor did not have a pithy comeback for that. Instead he mumbled a goodbye and left Jaime alone with his empty spaces.

* * *

Twelve hours after the doctor reported on Jaime's successful surgery, Brienne left the hospital without having seen Jaime once. He'd refused visitors no matter how many times Tywin sent a nurse in to ask him, and once Jaime's father had left in a tight-lipped fury, Kevan and Lancel had left, too, leaving Brienne, Podrick, Willem, and Bronn in the waiting area. Eventually, the others, too, had gone, and Brienne was on her own. She would have stayed longer, even though it was morning and she was slumped half-asleep in the ultra-uncomfortable waiting room chair, but Cersei was still coming in from King's Landing and Brienne didn't want to be sleep-deprived and alone when the other woman arrived. 

Instead Brienne retreated to her hotel room and collapsed on the bed still dressed in her race day clothes. She dreamed about Jaime bleeding in a crumpled truck on a rainy Tarth road, about Galladon bleeding against the walls of Harrenhal. She woke up a few hours later in the same position she'd fallen asleep with a small puddle of drool on her pillow. Before she'd even cleared the blurriness from her eyes she checked her phone to see if anyone had left word about Jaime, but the only message was from her father asking how things were going. 

'I don't know' she sent back. The only things she did know were that Jaime's hand had been severed in the crash and his scream was still rebounding in unearthly echoes in her head. She didn't know why his tire had ruptured like that, she didn't know if he was in pain or despair, she certainly didn't know if he would even be willing to see her if she went back to the hospital.

But on the last item, at least, she could try. She owed him that. Brienne stopped by the hotel lobby to extend her stay for another week, uncertain of when they'd be able to transfer Jaime from the Harrenhal hospital to one in King's Landing, and hopped a bus to see him.

* * *

“Go away,” Jaime greeted Cersei when she breezed through his doorway.

“That's no way to talk to your sister,” the nurse at her side said. Jaime couldn't remember the woman's name through the haze of painkillers, but he thought it might be Roz. 

“That's none of your business.” 

Cersei put on her best fake smile, a bright piece of fool's gold that no one except a Lannister would disbelieve, and patted Roz on the shoulder. “He's always like this when he gets sick,” she said, like he had the flu. “We'll be fine.” She maneuvered Roz out of the room and closed the door behind her. They'd moved Jaime from one private room to another near the top floor mid-morning, saying that he was just taking up space in post-op that could go to someone who actually needed it. This room was more like a hotel room with a hospital bed in the middle of it, designed to convince visitors and patients alike they were having a brief, pleasant layover in life. It didn't make him forget about his hand for a second. 

“What do you want?” he snarled at his sister. 

She stood next to the bed, on his left side where he was still whole. “Oh Jaime,” Cersei sighed, her mirror image eyes welling with the perfect amount of tears as she studiously did not look at his injury. “Look at you. I told you this would happen someday.” 

“You came to gloat.” 

“It's just the truth. You have to see now that racing has never been anything but damaging to you.”

“It's my _life_,” he said low. 

“A bad one.” He had seen Cersei in all her directed cruelty many times before, so he knew that this wasn't her trying to destroy him, it was just a side effect of her being right. 

“Get out,” he snapped, turning away. The window at least afforded him a view of God's Eye lake, houses crowding around its edge, the water sparkling blue and green in the morning sunshine. A pair of black swans flew into view and came to a long, skimming landing on the calm waters. 

“You know I'm right,” Cersei continued. “It's for the best, Jaime.” 

“For the _best_?” he spit out, whipping his head around to face her once more, blinking against a sudden rush of dizziness. “How can you say that?”

Cersei lifted her chin. “Driving cars around for hours week after week, never being home, never thinking about more than how fast you can go for some silly trophy, all while risking your life? What's the point?” 

He gaped at her, unable to talk, barely able to think. She'd dismissed everything he'd sacrificed for for most of his life in the span of a few sentences and she didn't even care. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his injured wrist. 

The door behind Cersei opened again and Brienne poked her head tentatively in the room and all of Jaime's empty spaces grew heavy. “I'm sorry,” she said, glancing between Cersei and Jaime, her cheeks going pink. “The nurse said I could come in.” 

“We're having a family discussion,” Cersei said. 

“And we're done with it,” Jaime added bitterly. “Come in if you want.” 

Brienne swallowed and nodded at him, moving to stand at his injured side opposite Cersei. He had been dreading seeing Brienne, unable to bear any pity in her eyes, but now that she was here he saw only a warm concern, a tender sadness, and a nervousness he hadn't seen in her since January. Her eyes searched his bruised face, then settled on his bandaged stump, her fingers hovering above his forearm. 

“Oh Jaime,” she breathed, “I'm so sorry.” 

He tucked his ruined arm a little closer to his side and her hand fell away. “It's not your fault.” 

“I should have warned you sooner that Ramsay was coming up behind you.” 

“It's not your fault,” he repeated more forcefully and Brienne pressed her lips together and sniffed loud in the quiet room. 

Cersei shifted but Jaime ignored her, too busy taking in Brienne. She looked worse than he'd ever seen her: deep circles under her eyes, pallid skin that even washed out her freckles, her jeans and shirt wrinkled from where, he assumed, she'd had them stuffed in her travel bag. She always packed light, he recalled, being too busy with work to spare time for what she considered the trivialities of fashion. Two weeks ago he still would have pushed her up against the window and kissed her backlit by the sun. But that was before, when he had two hands and something to give her besides just himself and the snarling vacuum inside him. 

“Jaime,” Cersei said sharply, unhappy as always to have anyone else eating up her attention. “How long will you be stuck here?” 

“They said a week or two.” 

“Will they be able to move you to King's Landing?” Brienne asked him. 

He shrugged his left shoulder. “I don't know. We haven't gotten much beyond the fact that I'm going to have to change my own bandages at some point.” 

“I can help with that,” Brienne said immediately. When Jaime glanced at Cersei, her face was pulled tight with a faint sheen of disgust. 

“We'll hire someone to do that. He doesn't need you playing nursemaid.” 

Brienne stiffened and stared down at the floor. “I didn't mean-”

“Cersei's right,” Jaime said. “I'm not going to make you be my caretaker.” _It was just sex_, she had insisted again before she pushed him away in his driver's room at Harrenhal, though he'd been certain there was more there in her turbulent eyes. That was the moment he'd lost all hope of fighting whatever was keeping her away; it had felt the same as the wheel wrenching out of his hand at Harrenhal, the ground coming up to meet him. He wouldn't let her tie herself to him now out of guilt when she had even less reason to stay than before. His arm throbbed at his side. 

He hated the triumphant sneer on Cersei's face when she put her hand on Jaime's left one. “Lannisters take care of themselves,” she said, somehow straight-faced with such an obvious untruth. 

Brienne looked lost for a moment and Jaime's heart twisted. If he'd had his right hand still he might have grabbed Brienne's with it, but all he had was nothing, and she nodded once, sharp, and backed away from his bed. “I just wanted to check on you,” she mumbled. “Make sure you were, I mean I know you're not all right, but-”

“Thanks for stopping by, Wrench,” he said, the nickname slipping out, and her eyes jerked up to his, open and hopeful. He realized with lightning clarity that she hadn't been nervous about Cersei, or afraid of what his hand would look like; she was afraid of _him_, that he would hate her. If he had remembered how to laugh he would've done so. He couldn't hate her now even if it had been she who had taken his hand. She'd taken the most important part of him already anyway. 

The door opened again and this time everyone went still when Tywin strode into the room, leaving the door wide open behind him. 

“I see you've stopped sulking finally,” Tywin said in greeting, and Jaime inhaled sharply. “What are you doing here, Ms. Tarth?” he continued in an accusing tone. 

“She's visiting me,” Jaime answered for her, but Tywin was glaring at Brienne with an intensity he usually reserved for Ned Stark or Doran Martell, men he considered personal, threatening enemies. 

“I was just leaving,” she said. She met Tywin's icy stare but instead of freezing she seemed to grow into herself, turning to solid steel, and Jaime had never been more proud of her than when she turned her back on his father to squeeze Jaime's lower leg. “Call me if you need anything.” Her hand was warm and heavy through the blanket, and he was ashamed of how much he'd missed even this small touch. When she'd pressed her hand to his chest in the driver's room it had felt like all his blood had gathered there, eager to be hers. 

He couldn't form a response but he kept his eyes on the door long after Brienne had shut it behind her. 

“The doctor says the surgery went well.” Tywin stood tall at the foot of the bed, and Jaime was reminded of the night his mother had died. He'd woken up to Tywin stooping hollow and shrunken at his feet, staring past Jaime, seven years old and terrified to find his iron-willed father floating like a limp balloon. For days Jaime had thought it was a very vivid nightmare even when their home filled with well-meaning visitors come to pay their respects. His father had never been a soft man before, but the death of Jaime's mother had irrevocably hardened whatever tenderness there might have been. That night had been the last time Jaime had ever seen Tywin at a loss. 

Jaime closed his eyes, concentrated on the pulsing of his injured arm. He'd fought against the last application of painkillers even as they'd injected it into his IV, but he'd down a whole bag now if his family would just leave him alone. 

“You're lucky to be alive,” Tywin continued, unbothered by Jaime's silence. 

“Am I?” Jaime murmured. 

Tywin scoffed. “You're not the only one who lost something here, Jaime. There's no way we can win the championship with just Lancel.” 

Fury roared through Jaime, filling up the emptiness with a familiar, bright, dirty heat. “You think I give a shit about what you lost?” he growled. “Fuck your Constructor's Championship, fuck the team, and fuck you.” 

Tywin wrapped his hands along the footboard, and for the first time Jaime could remember, there was an uncontrolled fire in Tywin's eyes, something angry and anxious. “You have no idea of what this means to the team, to our family. All you've ever cared about is yourself.”

“I lost my fucking hand!” Jaime shouted. “I'll never race again. I'll never win the championship. I'll never-” he choked on his own admission, unwilling to display any more wounds for his father. “_Get out_,” he said and it was more of a plea than a command. 

Tywin pushed himself away from the bed with a disgusted huff. “I'll pay to have you transferred back to King's Landing as soon as you're able. The rest of us are leaving today as planned. Cersei.” He nodded at his daughter, acknowledging her for the first time only as he strode out the door. Jaime exhaled, shaky. 

“You too,” he told Cersei, staring out at the lake. The swans were gone. He felt Cersei squeeze his good hand and then she was gone, too, and Jaime was alone.

* * *

Brienne left Jaime's room and nearly ran for the sunshine, bursting out into the fresh air and taking huge breaths. His beautiful face had been bruised, his hand was _gone_, but it was the dull, empty caverns of his eyes that she would not forget. She had seen that same hopeless look in her dad's eyes in the first days after Galladon had died, that belief that all the light in the world had disappeared. Even as a child Brienne knew her dad had fought his way back because she'd been there. She would be here now for Jaime, until he didn't need her anymore. 

But he'd called her Wrench and she clung to that with the ferocity of a woman not ready to let go. Maybe once the need had passed, they would have a chance to talk about what they wanted instead. 

After she left the hospital, Brienne ran into Podrick in the hotel lobby, his big bright red duffel bag slung over one shoulder. 

“H-hey,” he said. “D-did you see him? How is h-h-he?”

“He's...” she thought of how angry he had looked when she'd entered, how forlorn when she'd touched his leg. “His whole hand is gone,” she finally said. 

“Oh no,” Pod breathed. “Sh-should we v-v-visit?”

“He doesn't really want to see anyone. At least right now. Maybe later.” She nodded at Pod's bag. “Heading out?”

“Y-y-yeah they held the b-bus but it's leaving soon. You have t-t-time to pack, though.” 

“I'm not going,” she said quietly. “There's no work for me now and I...I want to be here for Jaime.” Even if he had seemed reluctant to have her there, she couldn't leave him alone in Harrenhal and she was certain his family wouldn't stay. Tyrion hadn't even shown up at all. “But you should go,” she added at Pod's conflicted frown. “It doesn't make sense for all of us to stay, and I'm sure they're going to try to find a replacement driver for Jaime for the last races.” The words were thick in her throat. 

“W-what about you? You c-c-could drive.”

“Tywin would never allow it,” she said, thinking of how his stare had been cold and dangerous as an ice storm. 

“B-but it d-d-doesn't matter th-that you're a girl! W-w-woman,” he amended hastily. 

How could she tell Pod that was the least of Tywin's problems with her? “Just trust me on this,” she said, unwilling to tell any more lies. “I will never drive for Tywin Lannister.” Even if he asked her she wouldn't do it, knowing her successes and stories would be forever entwined with such an awful man. _I'm no better than Jaime_, she thought ruefully. 

Pod nodded miserably. “T-take care. Text me how h-he's doing.” 

“Of course.” They exchanged a swift hug and she headed back to her hotel room, was stopped again by a quiet, “Ms. Tarth?” 

Brienne turned slowly, so tired she was certain she was seeing things. “Arthur Dayne?” she said, her mouth dropping open. 

The man smiled and nodded a little. He looked exactly as she'd last seen him on television a few years ago, his dusky skin still mostly smooth, though his always pale hair had turned more gray than blond and there more wrinkles around his kind, almost purple eyes. After retiring from racing, Dayne had become notoriously private, retreating to his home in Starfall in the western Red Mountains of Dorne. There were occasionally pictures of him on social media and in gossip columns, hiking those mountains, on shopping trips around Dorne, but for the most part the Formula 1 community had respected Dayne's privacy and when he made an occasional appearance at a race he was always received with thundering applause. 

“I hope I'm not bothering you,” he said in a deep, calm voice that reminded her of her father. 

“Of course not, it's no bother at all,” she squeaked. He held out his hand and she stared at it in confusion for several long seconds before she realized he wanted a handshake. Flushing bright red, Brienne quickly shook his hand, found he still had the same strong grip all drivers had. 

“I was hoping to talk to you about Jaime,” he said. “Perhaps in the hotel restaurant? I can buy you lunch if you like.” 

“No. I mean, yes, I'm happy to talk to you but you don't have to buy me anything. We can just talk. I'm not hungry.” 

His mouth twitched with a smile and he gestured for her to follow him. She did, briefly covering her face with her hands while she was safely behind his back before dropping them again with a sigh. They settled into opposite sides of a booth and Brienne stared blankly at the menu before shutting it. 

“I'm really not hungry, Mr. Dayne,” she said. “We can just talk.” 

“Let's not take up a booth for no reason.” He gestured at the waitress and ordered a farm-style brunch for himself and water for them both. “Coffee?” he asked Brienne and she shrugged and nodded. “And two coffees, please,” he asked the waitress. Judging by her pleasantly bored smile, Brienne suspected she had no idea who she was serving. 

“You've had a remarkable season,” Dayne said after a pause, nodding thanks at the waitress when she returned with their drinks. 

“Jaime did the driving.” 

“I know. I also know how much a race engineer can help, or hurt. And he wasn't driving like that before this year, so you helped a lot.” 

Brienne glanced down at the tabletop. “Thank you,” she murmured. 

“I was at the track yesterday to watch the race.” Brienne blinked up at him, surprised. Though she supposed it made sense why he was here this morning; Starfall was a long way from Harrenhal to just make a quick trip. “I don't usually go to more than the Oldtown Grand Prix, sometimes Highgarden or Sunspear if I want to make a vacation of it. This year, I've been to nine races.” 

“Why so many?” 

“To watch Jaime become the driver I knew he could be.” 

Brienne blinked back sudden tears. “Why didn't you say something?” 

“He didn't need that kind of pressure, and neither did you. Goodness knows there was enough media to keep you both busy. I appreciated that last interview you did with the Stark girl-”

“Arya,” Brienne cut in. “The Stark woman, Arya.” 

Dayne grinned, sharp but pleased. “Of course. I see why you've done so well,” he said and then looked up as the waitress brought his food. “Thank you, miss,” he told her before she left them alone again. 

He took a few bites of food while Brienne fixed her cooling coffee and took a sip. 

“You know,” Dayne picked up again, “they wanted to retire my number when I left racing, but I wouldn't let them. I knew Jaime was coming up fast and he'd made it clear he wanted it.” She watched Dayne carefully salt his eggs. “I held it for him because he'd earned the chance to drive under number eight.” 

It should have been a point of pride, a sweet story, but all she could see were Jaime's shadowed eyes in the hospital bed, the bandage wrapped tightly around his wrist, and Brienne felt a surge of anger. “You should have told him that.”

Dayne looked briefly surprised. “He was an arrogant prick, if you'll pardon my language. I didn't want to make it worse.” 

“He could have used a mentor,” she pressed. “Especially after Aerys.” 

“Aerys.” Dayne shook his head. “He wasn't a good man,” he said cautiously. 

“I know. Jaime told me all about him. How much did you know? How much did you let him get away with?”

He frowned at her, his eyes flashing. “I wasn't Aerys' keeper.” 

“You had to know what he was like off the track. And on.” 

“I know there were rumors about him, but there were rumors about me, too, just as disgusting, and untrue. You know how busy a season is, you think I had time to worry about Aerys?” 

Brienne huffed, shoved her barely drunk coffee away. “What did you think, after the accident? Did you think Jaime did it on purpose? For no reason except jealousy? Why didn't you retire your number then when he got kicked back down to F3?”

“I know he didn't do it on purpose. Jaime was never like that, even at his most puffed up he respected the sport.”

“Then why did you leave him to bear it alone?” she asked quietly. The memory of Jaime's relief in the sauna, when he'd told her his secret and she had believed him, flooded through her. Everything she had felt about Jaime had changed in that instant. He had changed. 

Dayne's fingers tightened on his silverware and he set them down, folded his hands solemnly on the table. “It wouldn't have mattered,” he said, but he sounded uncertain.

“It would have to him.”

He rubbed his hand down his face and sighed. “I was already distanced then; I didn't realize the extent to which they turned on him until it was too late.” 

Brienne shook her head, resigned. “Why did you want to talk to me today?” 

“Word is he was badly injured,” he said, watching her carefully. “Really badly.” 

“Yes.” She had studiously avoided looking at anything online or on tv, wasn't sure how much the world knew, but the state of his hand had been obvious even when they'd pulled Jaime passed out and bleeding from the wreckage. His sharp scream reverberated like a banshee in her thoughts. 

“Will he race again?”

“No,” she whispered, fighting back tears. 

“Damn.” Dayne sighed. “That's a tragedy, I'm sorry.” 

“I let him down,” she said, staring at the heaping pile of hash browns on Dayne's plate. Her stomach turned over even though she hadn't eaten since yesterday. She was too full replaying the moments before the crash over and over instead. If she'd warned Jaime sooner about Ramsay's approach he could have been better prepared, could have moved quicker or accelerated faster. 

“Were you his doctor?”

Brienne blinked, dragged her gaze up to Dayne, who was looking unexpectedly stern. “What?”

“Unless you were his surgeon and it was possible to save his hand and you failed, then this is not your fault.” 

The reasons piled up on her tongue but she just stared down at the table and let them lie. 

“Why I came,” Dayne said, his voice softer, “is because I thought Jaime would need someone now. I'd like to talk to him myself, but I wanted to talk to you, too. I want you to know what he's going through so you can help him. You clearly have a solid relationship and it's a natural instinct for a driver to turn to their race engineer in times of trouble.” 

Brienne felt her cheeks heat but she shook her head a little. “He doesn't want to see me.” 

“Maybe not now, no. You're a walking representation of everything he's lost. Even for me, making the decision by myself to leave Formula 1, it was so hard to retire. I dedicated my life to getting there and then to just stop and walk away...it felt like I was dying. I had to get as far away from the sport as I could so I could figure out how to live without it. Jaime's going through this same grieving process and he didn't even get to choose it.” 

She swallowed around the lump in her throat. She heard Jaime again, from the night on the phone: _I had to leave, you know, go so far from you I couldn't make it back_. “What do I do?” she asked. 

“Just be there for him. Get over your own guilt,” he said, surprisingly gently, “and know that he's going to be mad and lost for awhile, and be there to help him find his way. He'll need his friends more than ever, and he'll need to know that it doesn't have to be the end. He can still be involved in the sport somehow, when he's ready.” 

“I don't think he'll ever be ready for that.” 

Dayne shrugged. “Then he can become a hermit like me. But he needs to know he's got _a_ choice still, even if it's not the one he wanted.” He pushed his half-full plate away and sighed. “You know I don't think I'm hungry, either. Let me pay up.” 

When they walked into the lobby there was a small crowd of people who all turned towards them, and then a startled murmur when they saw Arthur Dayne. Cameras started to flash. 

“Brienne, have you seen Jaime?” “What are you doing here, Mr. Dayne?” “Brienne!” “Will Jaime ever race again?” “Has Golden Company or Ramsay reached out yet?” “Mr. Dayne, look this way, please.” “Will Lannister Corp be calling for an inquiry?” “Did Tywin call you, Mr. Dayne?” “Brienne, was this in any way your fault?” 

Brienne inhaled sharply, scanned the crowd to find who had asked her that, but everyone looked anxious and eager for information, and though none of their faces were cruel enough to be expecting an answer to that question, none of them seemed offended by it either. Peck came around the edge of the crowd, looking only sad and sorry, and she nodded at him. 

“How are you?” Peck asked her, and the other journalists stilled, phones and pens and cameras at the ready. 

“I'm tired,” she said. 

“How is he?” 

Brienne bit her lip, shook her head a little, unable to even say the words out loud. 

“He's in the hospital, but he's alive,” Dayne stepped in smoothly. “And that's all you'll get until Lannister Corp issues a full statement.” He laid his arm over her shoulder and guided her past the crowd towards the elevators, giving them a glare back over his shoulder that held them all in place. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

“The worst part of the job honestly. May as well use what respect I've earned for some good here.” He let her go and pressed the Up button. “I'll stay here until you get safely in the elevator.” 

Brienne nodded, a soft ding filling the tiled space. When the doors opened, Bronn stepped out and came to an abrupt halt and the three of them stared at each other while the doors closed again. 

“Arthur,” he said flatly. 

“Bronn.” There was a strange, non-threatening tension between them. “Push the button for Ms. Tarth, will you? I'm holding the vultures at bay.” 

Bronn looked past Dayne's shoulder and groaned. “Fucking media.” He glanced at Brienne. “How are you holding up, Chief?”

“I'm all right. What are you doing here still? Pod said the bus was leaving.” 

“It is. But I'm not.” He folded his arms across his chest, daring her to protest, but she just pressed her lips together and nodded in understanding. “What about him” he said, thrusting his chin at Dayne. 

“He just stopped by to talk. You're leaving?” she asked Dayne. 

“Yes. I've got a flight back to Starfall in a couple of hours. Do ask Jaime when he'll let me pay him a visit, though, once he's back in King's Landing.”

“I will. Thank you.” 

Dayne squeezed her shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Ms. Tarth. You've had a tremendous year. I don't think your career ended in Harrenhal either. Bronn.” 

“Arthur.” 

They gave each other cool once overs and then Dayne went back to the lobby, the journalists' voices rising again when he reappeared. 

Bronn pushed the Up button and when the elevator dinged he gestured for her to precede him inside. They were both on floor six, and he leaned back against the wall of the elevator and sighed as it lifted quietly. “You've seen him?”

“Briefly.” 

“How is he?”

Brienne opened her mouth, cast about for how to explain what he'd looked like in that hospital bed. “Empty,” she said finally. 

They arrived at the floor and paused in the hallway. “I'm gonna check in on him later,” Bronn said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Not today. I'll visit him tomorrow morning.” 

He nodded. “You can do mornings and I'll keep him company in the afternoons. I'm sure he'll be unbearable as usual but we'll put up with him,” he said, but the joke fell flat on the hotel carpet. Brienne had started towards her room when Bronn called after her, “Chief?” She glanced back at him. “You know how he feels about you, yeah?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.” 

“Good. I may have,” he hesitated, “I mean we all needed to focus on the racing. But now that it's done, maybe when he's ready you should talk to him about it. You seem like you might feel the same as he does.” 

Brienne blinked back tears and nodded. “I do.” 

“Good,” he repeated more warmly this time. “I've known Jaime a long time now and I know this next part is going to be hard as hell. But I know you being there will make it better.” 

Brienne smiled a little. “If he wants me, I'll be there.” 

“Yeah, I figured you would. You two've already fucked, haven't you?” She flushed red and hot and Bronn laughed a little. “That explains a lot,” he said wryly. “Not that it's any of my business. Well, I best be off, let you cool down before you melt from embarrassment.” 

He tapped a finger to his forehead and sauntered off, but this time she called him back. “Bronn!”

“What?”

“How do you know Arthur Dayne?”

He rolled his eyes. “That ponce? He's a good enough man but he cheats at poker. When I first got into racing I worked for his F2 team. We both fell for the receptionist at the office and we bet over who got to ask her out first. I won. Barely. Turns out I cheat at poker, too.” 

Brienne laughed softly. “How did the date go?”

“Pretty good. We're still married.” He winked. 

“Lollys worked in racing?” 

“She loved it. They barely let women in the building in those days, so she took the only job she could. Once I was made a mechanic she stopped working. Was sick of dealing with the macho bullshit. I don't blame her. She loves you.”

Brienne felt a pleased smile curl her lips. “I'd like to meet her someday.”

“Maybe someday you will. Get some rest, you look like you were in that crash, not Lannister.” 

“When you see Jaime, will you tell him,” she paused, not sure what to say. “Tell him he was right: it wasn't.” 

Bronn shrugged. “Sure. Dinner tonight? Since we're both stuck here.” 

“Yes, that would be nice.” 

“I can tell you more stories about Dayne, maybe take him down a notch or two.”

“That is your speciality,” she said, smiling. 

“Everybody's gotta have a hobby.” 

Brienne was still smiling when she let herself into her room.

* * *

“Did you get the short straw?” Jaime asked when Bronn entered his room without knocking later that afternoon. 

Bronn pulled one of the padded chairs by the window near the bed and sat down. “I see my faint hope this had all been a ruse to hide a personality transplant has been dashed.” 

Jaime shook his head and stared out the window. He'd spent most of the day staring out the window, watching the coming and going of the birds. They all had two wings, strong and powerful. A one-winged bird would be a liability. Would barely even survive the day. 

He knew ignoring Bronn wouldn't make him go away, but he was still annoyed when the other man sighed loudly and pulled another chair nearer to prop his feet up on. 

“At least take your shoes off,” Jaime grumbled. 

“Why, you going to be getting out of that comfy bed soon to sit over here?” Jaime glared at him. “When are you getting out of that bed, anyway?” 

“I don't know. They already make me walk to the bathroom now that I'm not a so-called fall risk.”

“Huh. Only been a day and you're already on your feet. Must be some sort of magic healing body you've got there.” 

“Not magic enough.” Jaime scratched at the bandage wrapped tightly around his wrist. The nurse had come in a little bit ago to tighten it again, compression to shape the stump so he'd be ready to try a prosthetic. 

Bronn twisted his head around the room, taking it all in. “This place is nicer than my hotel.” 

“Lucky me.” 

“Ah, I didn't say that.” He scratched at his chin. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course it does. It makes me tired, too, so you can just go.” 

“You go ahead and take a nap, I'll just turn the telly on and watch a show. I'm sure they've got the full cable package here.”

Jaime felt a snarl rise in his throat. “I don't need a babysitter.” 

“Good, because I'm shit at changing diapers.” 

“I'm going to sleep. I don't want you watching me while I do it.” 

“Why, do you snore? Or are you just afraid your pretty face isn't so pretty all slack-jawed and droolly?”

Jaime leaned his head back on the pillow, waiting for the emptiness to come and take him away again. It wasn't worth rising to Bronn's poking words, like a toddler trying to get attention. 

“What do you want to watch?” Bronn asked, reaching for the remote. 

“Nothing.” 

“Come on, I'm sure there's some bullshit reality show we could put on.” Jaime shut his eyes and tried to remember what it felt like to curl both hands into fists. The deadened nerves at the end of his right arm made it feel like he was wielding a meaty club. 

The TV turned on and the familiar WSN music played. Jaime opened his eyes and saw a newscaster looking serious. “Still no word from Lannister Corp Racing about their driver, Jaime Lannister,” the man said. 

“Shit,” Bronn yelped, fumbling with the remote. 

“Word is that he's been badly injured, and the World Championship he was so close to winning may-”

The TV clicked off again and he felt Bronn staring at him, but Jaime just turned his attention to the lake. Someone was canoeing across it, the oars – two of them, moving in perfect tandem – propelling it smoothly. 

“Sorry,” Bronn mumbled. He tossed the remote onto a nearby table. “No TV.” 

Jaime closed his eyes again and willed sleep to come, but he'd woken from a nap not long before Bronn had arrived, and his wrist was starting to hurt. It would be time for the pain meds soon at least, and he always slept a little after those. 

“Want to play a game?” Bronn asked, holding out his phone when Jaime glanced at him. 

“No.”

“Suit yourself.” They spent the next endless minutes like that, Jaime desperately trying to sleep, Bronn making quiet noises to himself while he tried, and failed, at whatever he was playing. 

“You hungry? I bet they have room service here.” 

“Why are you here?” Jaime finally snapped, the pressure in his wrist surging up his arm. 

“It's my shift,” Bronn said. “Chief and I are splitting our time. Ironically, hospitals suck for healing, even in fancy rooms like this one. We're keeping an eye on you.” 

“But why are _you_ here?” Jaime pressed, confused. 

Bronn sat up straight at that, his face twisting with genuine hurt and anger for the first time Jaime could remember in their long acquaintance. The man had always been so taciturn, so above any of Jaime's rankling and sharp barbs. At his worst, Jaime had called Bronn a hundred awful names, but he'd never once looked like this, his brown eyes glinting in pain. 

“Why am I here? You stupid cunt,” he said low. His hands gripped the sides of the chair tightly. 

“You don't owe me anything, Bronn. There's no reason for you to stay.” 

“No reason? You almost died out there, you shit. I have better reason than any of your atrocious family. I've known you since you were a dumb, bullheaded teenager. I've followed your career since you blew through F3 just by training harder than anyone else. You were a good driver, but you know what stood out? You loved the sport, more than anyone I've ever met. It was inspiring to watch you, to work with you. And no matter how much you pushed everyone away, I saw how you treated Pod. How you've been with Brienne once you got over yourself. It would have been easier to give up after Aerys, go live your pretty little rich boy life on your father's money and your notoriety, but you didn't. You stayed. You worked and you fought and you loved the sport even if you hated every single fucking person you worked with. Even when they all hated you. You think I just hung around your sorry ass because you paid me well? I thought you were smarter than that. I thought you knew-” Bronn exhaled sharply and leaned back in the chair. He looked older, aged a decade in a minute. “I guess I was wrong.” 

Jaime looked out at the lake and then, slowly, down at his hand. He'd tried to avoid looking at it at all, the dissonance of nothing where his hand had been still making him dizzy. He'd known Bronn for half his life, he realized. The man had not let him drown when Jaime had first joined Dragonfire. He'd said yes to being on Jaime's Lannister Corp F1 crew before anyone else and with not a hint of hesitation at working for the Kingslayer. He'd stayed even when Jaime was at his most furious and cruel, fighting back without ever going for the dig that would genuinely wound. If there had ever been anyone in his life that believed in him, it was the coarse, angry, worn-down man slumped in the chair at his side. 

“You _are_ wrong,” Jaime said. And then he looked at Bronn. “I was a _great_ driver.”

Bronn looked up, and he huffed a tired laugh. “That you were, Lannister. That you were.”

* * *

They didn't talk much more after that, and then the painkillers did release and Jaime fell asleep again while Bronn muttered that he'd forgotten to tell Jaime something important. 

“'Sok,” Jaime slurred. “Tell me t'morrow.” 

He woke in the middle of the night, dinner cold on the table next to his bed, the chair Bronn had been in empty. Jaime pressed the call button and waited for the nurse on duty to come help him out of bed. The first time he'd tried on his own he had forgotten he only had one hand, and when he'd went to lever himself out with both he'd toppled to the side and nearly crashed to the floor, knocking his IV over. He hadn't tried on his own again. 

The nurse knocked lightly and entered. It was Gilly, he saw, the young, sweet one, pale and doe-eyed and looking too slim to be much help given his size. “Did you need something, Mr. Lannister?” she asked in her soft voice. 

“I need to use the bathroom. Are you able to help me up?”

“Of course. Though I suspect you're strong enough to stand on your own.” She came over and put his injured arm gently around her shoulder. “Come on now, swing your legs over.” 

He did as directed, found her slender frame was stronger than it looked. She still made him bear most of his own weight as they walked, though, and left him to relieve himself in private. When he washed his hand after, an awkward affair made more awkward by the sticky soap pump he struggled to work one-handed, he glanced at himself in the mirror. Purple bruises on his forehead from the helmet, scratches on his neck and upper arms from debris, dark circles under his eyes even darker against his unusually pale skin. It had been less than two days since the crash, but it felt like a week. A month. A lifetime. 

“Everything okay, Mr. Lannister?”

“Fine,” he said hoarsely. He missed his hand. He missed Brienne. He couldn't have either. Jaime pushed the door open and let Gilly help him back to the bed, gingerly using his left arm to roll in. She checked his vitals and examined his bandage while he looked up at the ceiling. 

“Everything is looking good,” she said. She had the perfect nurse's voice, he thought. Tender and caring, but still confident. Like she believed he'd walk out of here tomorrow if he just put his mind to it. “Try to get some more sleep now. Sleep is a great healer.” 

“I thought medicine was.” 

“Well,” she smiled, and he saw a flash of crooked teeth. “It got you here, but your body is doing most of the work now. Your body and your mind.” 

“What does my mind have to do with anything?”

“Oh lots,” she said very seriously. “My husband is a therapist who sees lots of patients like you.”

“Like me?”

“Trauma,” she said simply, the single word sliding into the empty spaces in a perfect fit. “He says that sometimes the body won't heal all the way right because the mind hasn't healed right.” 

“Sounds like nonsense,” Jaime sneered. 

She frowned at him and he felt like a little boy being reprimanded by his mother. “It's not,” she said firmly. “I've seen it too many times. Maybe you should try some therapy, see for yourself. My husband is very good. Samwell Tarly, you can look him up.” 

Therapy? Gods knew he probably had enough things to talk about, but he did not want to talk about them with a stranger. “Think I'll stick with sleep,” he said. 

She shrugged and none-too-carefully fluffed up his pillow. “Suit yourself.” She didn't say anything else after that, just finished her tidying and left him in the dark with his aching arm and his aching heart, sleep not doing a good job of healing either.


	18. October (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone with him, free to stare as much as she wanted, she did, but not at his stump. Instead she catalogued every small cut and bruise from the crash, the sweaty tendrils of hair curling along his temple, the pulse she could see in the line of his neck. Brienne had felt his heartbeat there with the pads of her fingers and the flat of her tongue and it had tasted strong and true.
> 
> Jaime made a scared noise in his throat and she covered his hand with hers, curling her fingers around his palm. Then he gasped, still asleep, and she gently hushed him: “Shh, it’s just me. It’s Brienne.” He stilled under the sound of her voice, the lines on his face smoothing out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy last day of 2019! I figured I'd celebrate by making one last chapter post in the decade (please do not @ me about how the decade really starts in 2021, both takes are correct). This is officially the shortest chapter of the story so far, but sometimes you have to make chapter breaks at emotional moments not at word counts. Shoutout to [Kristie Sita](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZg2MpbQIc2owBQbi5CwXCA) who is a YouTube vlogger that has lots of funny, educational, and real-talk videos about what it's really like to be a hand amputee. I have watched these extensively and they're worth the time.

Brienne took a deep breath outside of Jaime's room and then let it out slowly, relaxing her shoulders. _Calm and cheerful_, she told herself. She plastered what she hoped was a sincere smile on her face and knocked on the door.

There was no response, either welcoming her in or sending her away, so she frowned and slowly opened the door. But as soon as she'd stepped in she saw he was sleeping, and she hesitated in the doorway. His brow was furrowed, his lips turned down. Whatever he was dreaming about, it was causing him pain. Brienne quietly shut the door behind her and took the seat pulled up next to his left side.

Alone with him, free to stare as much as she wanted, she did, but not at his stump. Instead she catalogued every small cut and bruise from the crash, the sweaty tendrils of hair curling along his temple, the pulse she could see in the line of his neck. Brienne had felt his heartbeat there with the pads of her fingers and the flat of her tongue and it had tasted strong and true.

Jaime made a scared noise in his throat and she covered his hand with hers, curling her fingers around his palm. Then he gasped, still asleep, and she gently hushed him: “Shh, it’s just me. It’s Brienne.” He stilled under the sound of her voice, the lines on his face smoothing out.

She got out her phone with her free hand and scrolled awkwardly through non-race related news articles while he slept another ten minutes, before she felt him stir under her touch. Brienne glanced up to see his eyes were open, hazy and half-awake as he blinked at her and smiled.

“I thought I dreamed you,” he said, his voice still thick with sleep. She'd heard that voice enough times since Tarth that she knew her cheeks were reddening even as she pulled her hand away.

“No dream,” she mumbled, standing and going to open the blinds. When she looked back he'd raised his bed to a sitting position, his gaze narrow and considering.

“You came back.”

“Of course I did,” she said, frowning. “You're still here.”

“My family didn't have the same concern.”

She bit back a cruel comment about his family and shrugged. “They don't need to. Bronn and I are both staying here until they send you home.”

Jaime looked past her out the window, his eyes searching the sky. “You don't have to.”

“I know.” She looked down at his stump, the bandage bright in the sunshine. “How's it feeling?”

“It's not.”

“I mean does it...does it hurt?”

“Not enough,” he said quietly.

“Arthur Dayne came to see you,” she blurted out, and Jaime finally looked at her, a hint of who he had been sparking in his green eyes.

“Here? While I was sleeping?”

“At the hotel. He was watching the race; he's been watching a lot of your races this season. He wanted to talk to you about,” Brienne bit her lip. “Well. About what you do next.”

“What is there to do? I can't drive a Formula 1 car with one hand and a prosthetic. I'm done with racing. Forever.”

“You don't have to be done with all of it,” she offered tentatively.

“What would you have me do? Personal assistant? I can't even type well.”

She leaned back against the windowsill, the sun warming her back. “I don't know, an executive, maybe?”

He laughed sharply, a bitter, barking sound. “Become my father, you mean. No.”

“You could never be your father.” _I could tell him now_, she thought, trying to form words with her suddenly dry mouth. It was an opening to lay bare all that Tywin had said, the reason behind why she'd abandoned Jaime before the crash and why she would not abandon him now. She briefly imagined it: his initial relief followed by the weight of what it meant, and it stilled her tongue. She couldn't put that on him when he was already dealing with so much. Even as terrible as Tywin was, Jaime needed his father now, or at least his money and security, the false hope that his father might not be as awful as he seemed. Jaime had so little other hope to cling to.

Jaime swallowed and looked up, his head tilting back. “I ruined your career, too.”

“You didn't,” she protested immediately. “If anything this is my fault. I should have stayed just your mechanic. I could have stopped what happened.”

“You can't stop a freak accident.”

She thought of Dayne warning her to get over her own guilt and she silenced, barely, further protests. “Lannister Corp paid the hospital to keep all media out and at least one hundred yards away from the outside. You'll be left alone as long as you're here. They also released a statement this morning.”

“What did it say?”

“What you would expect. A terribly tragic accident, your hand was lost and you won't be racing the rest of the season. They'll be looking for a new driver, though of course you can't be replaced. Thank you everyone for your concern, they'll pass along all the well wishes to you.”

“Have they asked you to drive?”

Brienne snorted. “No.”

“Fools.”

“I won't drive for your father,” she said firmly, ignoring Jaime's curious look. “But he wouldn't ask me anyway.”

“No, I suppose he wouldn't.” Jaime sighed, a loud, long exhalation that filled up all the space between them. “So Arthur Dayne, huh?”

“In the flesh.”

“Was it handsome flesh?” he asked, and the faint teasing tone of his voice had her heart swelling.

“Not as handsome as Renly,” she said, and Jaime chuckled, sounding tired but genuinely amused.

They sat in mildly awkward silence for a few minutes, Brienne examining every corner of the room, every line of the modern art that hung on the wall. How different this moment would have been six months ago, or even two. Now she knew what his hands and body felt like on hers, she had seen him at ease and smiling, knew the way his eyes caught the light when he turned his head towards the sun. And she had given all those things up to get him to a World Championship that had been stripped away. Because she loved him, with all her foolish heart.

“Gods, Brienne, why did this happen?” Jaime whispered, stricken and angry, into the quiet. He was holding his stump up, twisting and turning it as much as he could with the tubes still attached, staring at it like it was a curse.

Her first instinct was to blame herself, to blame Ramsay or the tire-makers or the crew. But the truth was was that there was likely nothing to blame. He'd gotten unlucky, maybe more than most, but still just a random chance of fate and timing and his hand being somewhere it shouldn't at just the wrong moment. She suspected that wouldn't give him any comfort, though. Not that Jaime had ever been one to seek out comfort; he'd always seemed happier on the edge of the knife than safely back at the handle. He had driven too fast and loved the sport too hard and now it had repaid him by spitting him out, broken, on the asphalt.

“We can't focus on the why,” she said, unflinching under his raw, reaching stare. His eyes were as bright and unyielding as stars.

“What am I now?”

“You're who you've always been,” she said, urgent, covering his hand. “That hasn't changed.”

He shook his head forcefully. “I've only ever been this. My whole life, it's who I was. Jaime Lannister: race car driver. A man without honor. _Kingslayer_. At least Kingslayer was better than this.” He waved his stump, his face twisting in agony. “At least it was _something_.” A tear slipped down his cheek and he groaned, a painful, ragged sound that twisted out from deep inside. “Fuck!” he hissed like the crack of a bullet. His whole body heaved upward, once, and then he curled in and away from her, his shoulders shaking.

“Jaime,” Brienne whispered, her heart crumpling like rubber and steel. She touched his back and he arched away from her.

“Leave me alone,” he begged in a voice soaked with tears. Brienne stood, her hand hovering near. “_Leave_,” he roared, a furious storm that pushed her back a step, two, towards the door, before she stopped herself.

She could not shelter him from his own grief, but she could ride through it with him. He'd lived through all the loss in his past alone and she would not let him do it again. She wasn't afraid; she'd been in storms before. Brienne climbed onto the bed with Jaime and wrapped her arms around his shaking body. Quiet, desperately sad sounds slipped from his clenched teeth as she gripped him tightly.

“Let it go,” she murmured. “I'm here.” He made a noise like a wounded animal and clamped his hand around her wrist, so hard she was sure he'd leave an imprint.

Brienne held on, her forehead pressed against the back of his bowed and burning neck, and listened to Jaime's world collapsing.

* * *

Her arms were aching by the time Jaime's heaving sadness finally calmed, the little stuttering hiccups dissipating and his breathing evening out into gentle waves. Brienne shifted and flexed her fingers and he stirred in her arms, his hand lax on her wrist.

“It's okay, you can go to sleep,” she murmured.

“You don't have to do this.”

Brienne breathed out slowly. “Do what?” she asked, keeping her tone gentle. “Be your friend?”

Jaime pulled away from her, tucking his arms into his own body. “You don't owe me this just because we slept together.”

“Jaime,” she sighed, from deep in her heart. “That has nothing to do with why I'm here. There's no debt between us. I...I care about you.” He tensed in her loose embrace and she could feel his questions, his belief that the answers would help more than hurt, but she had to protect him from what he didn't yet know. She could push his father's goodwill by being here for Jaime, but she was afraid to push too far. “When you're healed we can talk more about what that means,” she whispered, offering him as much as she could to hold the full answers at bay. Knowing Jaime, it wouldn't last long, but she just needed it to last long enough until they both knew what their futures held. Besides, she'd asked Bronn to tell him it wasn't just physical, and surely when Jaime had time and space he would understand what that meant, could be patient enough to wait until she could tell him everything. “You need rest,” she went on, “I'll stay with you until you're asleep.”

“Brienne-”

“Sleep,” she said, firm, and closed her eyes and breathed him in. Eventually his muscles relaxed, his body melding to hers in a way so familiar her heart hurt, and he was asleep again. Brienne extricated her arm from underneath his heavy body. Jaime's face was calm, quiet. He'd be having no more dreams today.

Relieved, Brienne left Jaime to sleep, her shirt sweaty from where she'd been holding him so tightly against her, a red ring around her wrist. She was lost in thought on the bus ride back to the hotel. While she hoped that would be the worst of it, she knew it was unlikely. Jaime would have to find purpose in himself, and even in the short but intense time she'd known him, she knew how little he thought of himself outside of his skills as a driver. She knew him, the good parts and bad, and loved him for both; she knew Bronn did, too, and Podrick, and perhaps others. They would have to be Jaime's confidence until he could build his own.

When she stepped into the lobby, a handful of media were still there and they swarmed towards her.

“Brienne, what do you think of Lannister Corp's press release?” Bonifer Hasty asked.

“I think it states the situation appropriately.”

“Have you seen Jaime? How is he responding to news that his career is over?”

“That's private,” she snapped. “I'll tell you all this one time and then I'm done with these ambushes: the man has just been in a serious car crash. He needs sleep and he needs time and he needs you to get out of his fucking life.” Hasty raised his eyebrows in surprise and she flushed. “There's another race in Storm's End in a week and a half, why don't you prepare for that instead of leeching off of a human being's grief? Jaime won't talk to you, and I won't talk to you either. Just go away.” She shoved through them, stabbing the elevator button with a trembling finger, grateful when it opened almost immediately.

She let herself into her hotel room with a heavy sigh, staring aimlessly around before sitting down with her laptop to catch up on email. Who knew how much longer she'd have to answer it? Would Tywin insist she be let go immediately now that Jaime could no longer race, or would he at least let her stay on contract until the season ended in November?

Knowing Tywin Lannister, it was far more likely to be the former. She half expected her password to no longer work, that they'd have already shut down all her accounts, but she was able to log in as usual and she scanned through her emails. There was one from Arya, all sympathy and well wishes, and one from Addam asking her to tell him the second he could visit Jaime. She typed out a quick reply to his, promising she'd let him know as soon as Jaime was back in King's Landing. When she hit send, she noticed a new message in her inbox from Hyle. Brienne read it hesitantly.

_Brienne -_

_Sorry to hear about Lannister. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Give him my sympathy and best wishes for a quick recovery. Would love to talk to you about my offer whenever you're free. Any time. Any place. I'll come to you, or maybe I'll see you at Storm's End Grand Prix? Now's the time. Unlikely Lannister Corp will keep you. Don't let your career end on the track in Harrenhal just because I was an asshole once. Think about it. Please._

_Best,_   
_Hyle_

She hovered her mouse over the delete button, angry that Hyle had taken this tragedy to try to get to her once again, despairing that Hyle was right. Brienne's eyes flickered over the message again, the words bouncing and clattering like marbles inside her. She sighed and clicked Reply.

* * *

Jaime awoke, his throat and eyes rubbed raw with sandpaper, to find someone half Brienne's size but twice her ego sitting in the chair by his bedside reading the newspaper. He was briefly disappointed she was gone; her admission still burned like a small, unsteady flame in the room and he was afraid it would go out with her distance.

“Tyrion,” he rasped. “Finally found some time to visit?”

Tyrion looked up and there was no amusement in him at all. Jaime had never seen him look so completely despondent. “You must be thirsty,” Tyrion said, lifting himself out of the chair and getting Jaime a cup of water. When Jaime drank the whole thing down, Tyrion filled his cup again. “I'm sorry it took me so long to get here,” he apologized when Jaime had temporarily quenched his endless thirst.

“Too busy fucking some nameless woman?”

His brother looked ashamed. “I wish it were that simple.”

Jaime just stared at him, in no mood to offer understanding when it was him stuck in this hospital.

Tyrion climbed back into the chair and sighed. “I was afraid to see you.”

“It's not contagious,” Jaime muttered, and Tyrion's lips twitched in the tiniest, briefest of smiles.

“I didn't want to see you like this.”

“In a hospital gown?” Jaime offered gamely.

“Cut down to my level.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Tyrion's head bowed low under Jaime's stare. “Joke's on you, brother, they took my hand not my feet.”

“Don't do that,” Tyrion said, shaking his head.

“Do what? Haven't you spent your whole life biting first because of your height? I'm just learning from you.”

“I don't want you to be like me. You're a much better person than that.”

“Wrong again. You've always been held in much higher regard. Frankly I could have used some of your respect these past years.”

“The only respect anyone assigns me is for my ability to hold my alcohol.” Tyrion exhaled and when he met Jaime's eyes he looked tired. “Why don't you ever tell me anything real? I'm your brother, by the gods. You don't have to be like this with me. Especially now.”

“Don't start,” Jaime said, leaning his head back against the pillow. He was wiped clean and fragile from breaking down in front of Brienne, from her whispered promise that all hope might not be lost; even as glad as he was to see his brother, part of him wished Tyrion – wished everyone – would just leave him alone.

“I saw your car on that track and I...” Tyrion looked down at his hand as though he expected to see a glass he could lose himself in there. “I thought you were dead.”

“I certainly feel like I'm in one of the seven hells.”

“Stop it,” Tyrion snapped. “I'm trying to be serious. When I thought you were dead I realized I've never even told you I love you.”

“Fine, you've told me, now you can go.”

Tyrion rubbed the bridge of his nose in a gesture that looked startlingly like their father. “I blame our upbringing for this, not you. We haven't had the best male role models.”

“Our female role models haven't been great, either.”

His brother snorted and leaned back in his seat, pressing his hands together like he was praying. “My first thought when I saw your accident was that I would be alone in the world without you. How pitiful is that?”

“Very. Selfish, too.”

“I'm a selfish man, Jaime, surely you know that. But my second thought,” he went on, all his ease disappeared, “was how dark your world would seem in the aftermath.”

“I lost my hand, not my sight.”

Tyrion sighed heavily. “Maybe I should have a near death experience so you'll be serious with me for one minute.”

“What do you want from me, Tyrion? Do you want me to cry on your fucking shoulder? To open my heart and drown you in my anger? What will make this trip worthwhile for you?”

“I want you to hear what I'm telling you, Jaime: you can't leave me alone in the world.”

“It's not like I tried,” Jaime said, staring out the window. Clouds had covered the sun and the God's Eye was gray and dim today.

“I don't want you to try in the future either.”

Jaime squeezed his eyes shut hard, starbursts appearing briefly in the black. The future was a long road stretching to a destination he couldn't imagine here in this bed with his missing hand and his missing heart.

“I'm glad you won't be racing anymore,” Tyrion said softly.

For a moment Jaime hated his brother, a deep and twisted vine he grabbed and desperately tried to choke back. “Is that why you never stood up for me after Aerys? Were you hoping I'd just give up?”

Tyrion smiled, something small and sad and knowing. “Who do you think convinced father to bring you back to the team again?”

“Why didn't you ever say anything?” Jaime asked with a frown.

“I wanted you to love me for me, not what I could do for you. You were the only one who ever did.” Tyrion's eyes were bright, a sheen of tears that Jaime hadn't seen since his brother had been young and words still hurt him. Jaime had done what he could to protect Tyrion from every sharp-tipped arrow, but as his racing career grew he'd had to spend more time away and Tyrion had built an armored shell no one could pierce.

“Tyrion,” Jaime sighed, and he felt his brother's small hand briefly cover his.

“Don't make a joke of this,” Tyrion begged him quietly.

Jaime turned his hand over and gripped his brother's. “I won't leave you alone. Not until we're much older anyway.”

Tyrion squeezed his fingers and pulled his hand away. “Optimistic of you to assume I won't die first. I plan to go out in a drug-fueled orgy, you know.” Jaime laughed, startled. “Not only will I be happy, I'll have the additional pleasure of knowing that while I'm roasting in one of the hells father will have to deal with the public outcry when I'm gone. Win-win.”

“I can't imagine why you're not father's favorite child,” Jaime said wryly.

“Truly astonishing,” Tyrion agreed. He settled back in the chair, his feet dangling a little off the floor. “I have all afternoon free, Jaime, shall I describe in great detail which act in particular I expect will cause my death?”

Jaime groaned and awkwardly yanked his pillow from behind his own head and threw it at his brother.

* * *

Jaime's hospital stay settled into an unexpected routine. Every morning he woke to a nurse's exam, performed a wound check and bandage change under their increasingly hands-off supervision, then ate a mildly flavorful breakfast while waiting for Brienne. She entered the same way every time: her double-tap knock so familiar from work, a hesitant smile on her full lips, and “good morning, Jaime,” in a voice that warmed him like sunshine. He tried not to think about his racing career when she was there, or the fact that she wouldn't be spending time with him at all if he hadn't crashed, or about how the ache in his wrist was nothing compared to the ache he felt wanting to hold her again; instead he packed all of it in boxes and shoved them away, grateful just to have her near. He held on to the fantasy that here in this plush hospital room everything between them was fine and it could go on this way forever.

Every day when she left it was a battle not to beg her to stay, to force the conversation she had promised was in their future. But he had pushed too hard too fast last time and he would not do that again. The only thing Brienne had ever directly asked from him was his patience and he had all the time in the world for her now.

In the afternoons Bronn would show up, a visit that inevitably started with Bronn insulting him for being lazy and ended with Jaime getting his ass kicked at poker while Bronn needled him endlessly any time Jaime even hinted at complaining about how difficult it was to play one-handed. Three days after the crash, while Jaime had been on the verge of bluffing Bronn into a loss, Jaime's physical therapist arrived. He was a dour, taciturn man who gave his name as Ilyn Payne and said he was based out of King's Landing so he’d be working with Jaime long term. After he was done and Jaime's arm was burning, his head and back covered in sweat, his jaw aching from how tightly he'd been clenching it, Jaime considered putting a call into the man's manager and having him transferred to Winterfell instead. But his arm did feel better, less a useless weight on his body and more the part of him it had always been. Payne could stay for one more session, at least.

On the fourth day, Jaime mastered getting in and out of bed by himself, and he'd nearly floated around his room buoyed by his small success. The next morning Jaime's routine altered when the doctor entered with the nurse, smiling wide. “Mr. Lannister, I heard the good news.”

Jaime grunted, focused on the work of unwrapping his bandage. The doctor stepped closer, examining the wound. It had been a clean surgery, Jaime had to admit, the flaps of skin expertly sewed together to form a pattern of tight red lines on the inside of his arm, the stump a round bulb.

“We moved some muscle down to give you padding,” the doctor said as he gently touched the edges of the stitches and nodded thoughtfully. “That will make this weight-bearing for you. You'll be able to do push-ups on it once the scar has fully healed.”

Jaime blinked up at him. “Really?”

“Absolutely. It's healing very well and your father has set up an initial appointment for you in King's Landing next week to start talking about prosthetics. There are lots of different attachments now, you'll find you're surprisingly functional.” He stepped back and tucked his hands in his pockets. “I'll make sure the nurses show you how to keep it clean and we'll get you a desensitization brush to take home, but you're looking good to leave in two days.”

“Which hospital in King's Landing are you sending me to?”

“Oh not to the hospital, Mr. Lannister,” the doctor said, grinning. “To your actual home.”

Which was how just over a week after the accident, Bronn, Brienne, and Jaime left Whent Hospital with their assorted luggage to wait outside for Sandor to come get them. As they emerged Jaime blinked and held up his good hand to shield himself from the sunlight. _I am alive_, he thought, turning his face to the sky, the reality of it hitting him now that he was out in the world once more. His tender right arm felt small and fragile against his side.

Sandor pulled up with an abrupt halt and unfolded himself from the SUV to glare at the hospital like it was an enemy he was sizing up and trying to intimidate.

“Thanks for coming to get us,” Brienne said as she opened the back and started tossing luggage in with ease. Jaime watched her hungrily, the shift and pull of her muscles as she moved with quiet strength. He could recall too well how those arms felt tight around him, those strong hands gripping his back. In the muted half-life of the hospital he'd managed to ignore all that was between them, but here, drunk on the sun and fresh air, he couldn't hold closed the dark closet he'd put the boxes in, and everything fell out again into the light in a painful rush.

He heard her telling him _it was just sex_, a lie he couldn't disprove except when he looked into her beautiful eyes. She had held him as he'd fallen apart that second day, her steady murmurs a lighthouse in the storm, and said she cared for him. It wasn't an admission of love, but it was a hope that someday it could be. He wished he could love her less until then, but Brienne being Brienne was enough to remind him every second that would never happen.

She looked up at him now and her pale skin flushed red, but instead of looking away she came nearer while Bronn and Sandor got into the car.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked him softly.

Jaime swallowed hard. “Not at all. But I don't have much choice.”

Brienne smiled a little, as resigned as he felt. “You can have shotgun,” she offered, charming him as easily as always and he swayed towards her like a tree in the wind, but she turned her head away and he stilled. _Patience_, he reminded himself. With his hand and his career and his confidence gone, it was the only thing he had left to offer her.

So instead he just gave her a tight-lipped smile and opened the door, managing the seat belt with more ease than he could have asked for. Sandor looked him over, his gaze lingering only briefly on Jaime's bandaged stump.

“Don't put your feet up on my dashboard,” he grumbled, before the engine roared to life and he drove them down the Kingsroad to home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wishing you all a happy, safe, and peaceful new year. Thank you for your incredible support through the first half of this fic. I will do my best to keep it up for the last half. :)


	19. October (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Bronn and Brienne had left Jaime and his luggage in the apartment six days ago, he'd thought that it was the first step towards his recovery, but what he'd realized thirty minutes into being on his own was how fucking hard it was going to be to be on his own. Not just the physical tasks – he'd given up putting his shirts back on hangers after two annoying minutes and thrown them in crumpled balls on the floor of his walk-in closet, and after wrestling with the shampoo in the shower he'd determined going bald might be the best course of action for the rest of his life – but the quiet of his apartment became swiftly suffocating. He hadn't realized how much welcome distraction Brienne and Bronn's daily visits had provided when he was in the hospital, or how much structure he'd built around the nurses' schedules. Racing had been his whole life before the crash and none of that demanded his time any more. Now that he was home, he could do anything any time, but what he did was sit on his couch and grow more despondent and angry at his useless residual limb and the fact that he wasn't behind the wheel and never would be again. 
> 
> It had not gotten better as the days grew closer to the next race.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just pretend when I started this whole thing I said I was going to post "at least once a weekend, whichever day" and that I have not fallen so completely off my initial posting schedule that that first author's note isn't entirely laughable. 
> 
> Also a few content notes for emotional state stuff in this chapter at the end.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Hyle said when he sat down in the overstuffed recliner across from Brienne at her local coffeeshop. “I was surprised you even responded, frankly. You've been so reluctant to talk to me.” 

“That hasn't changed,” she muttered, taking a sip of her coffee. 

Hyle half-smiled, clearly confused whether she was joking or not. “How's Lannister?” he asked, avoiding the question entirely. 

“Recovering.” She assumed he was, at least. After she and Bronn had delivered him safely to his apartment two days ago, Jaime had not answered the one time she'd called, had been slow to respond to even her texts, and every time she'd offered to come over he'd refused. 'I'm not in the hospital anymore, Wrench, you can have your space' his last one yesterday had said.

Brienne hadn't been sure how to respond to that, so she hadn't at all. That had been over twelve hours ago. Thirteen hours and twenty six minutes, if she were counting. Which she was not. 

“Can't believe he's done racing just like that. I'd kill the man that did that to me,” Hyle said, full of obvious bluster. 

“Ramsay got enough penalty points he's out of the race this weekend.”

“A single race in exchange for a man's whole career? Probably for his world championship, too, since he can't get any more points now.” Hyle shook his head grimly. “Ramsay's lucky he didn't pull that shit on me.” 

Sighing, Brienne took another sip of her coffee. She had to admit that Jaime had been much less angry about the loss of his hand and his career than she'd expected. He'd seemed instead resigned to a fate he'd long seen coming. The spark that had once lit his eyes just thinking of race day was gone, snuffed out with the screeching of metal, and sadness was the only debris left behind. Except for when he looked at her and she could feel the weight of his hope pressing against her heart. 

It was for the best they hadn't seen each other since the journey from Harrenhal. She wanted to tell him everything, but Tywin still had their photos and she was afraid of what he and Jaime both would do. Of what Jaime would think of her for giving in to his father's demands in the first place. The distance between them now that they were back in King's Landing made it easier to push away his pain and her own, made it easier to believe they could go on without either of them having to strip their hearts bare first. 

“What did you want to talk about?” she asked Hyle. Bland, inoffensive, obnoxious Hyle, who still thought he'd just been a mild jerk back at Griffin, but who also seemed genuinely interested in her skills. Hyle would not be a complicated man to work with, she was certain. 

“I've been holding the mechanic spot open for you. My chance is shot in terms of the World Championship this season so Randall isn't pushing for a decision yet, but he's getting impatient to fill the position. You know, most drivers don't have influence on hiring decisions,” he added proudly, “but Randall respects my input. I've told him I've got the perfect person, they're just not ready yet. That's you, obviously.” 

“Randall doesn't know it's me you want to hire?”

“Not yet.”

“When are you planning on telling him?”

Hyle waved the question away. “I'll work it out. Trust me, Brienne, I've got everything under control.” 

She very much doubted that. “I don't get why you're pushing so hard to hire me.” 

He set his coffee down and leaned towards her, his hazel eyes serious. “Everyone in racing is talking about Jaime's turnaround this season and to a man they're convinced it was you. Surely other teams have reached out to you by now?” 

“No. Not one.” 

“Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. “That doesn't make any sense,” he murmured to himself. 

“None of this does.” 

“You don't think...Tywin hasn't forbidden contact with you, has he?”

Brienne straightened abruptly, feeling the certainty of it settle in her bones. Hyle was the only one she knew well enough that he could reach out to her directly. The others had probably been biding their time over contracts, making official inquiries and not wanting to piss off Tywin Lannister by going around the old boys' club to ask her directly. Hyle's hubris had made him ignorant of the risk he was taking, and Brienne might've felt bad for him if he wasn't Hyle. 

There seemed to be no part of her life Tywin wasn't hellbent on invading and she sat there in the coffee shop taking deep breaths while Hyle's brow furrowed deeper and deeper with concern. 

“Are you ok?” he asked and then, his brain finally processing everything, added, “Am I gonna be ok?”

“Are you rescinding your offer?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. 

Hyle paled. “I...no. But do me a favor and keep it between us for now? I just need to grease the skids before we make anything official.” 

“Nothing is official, Hyle. I won't make any decisions until the year is done.” 

“That's a long time,” he muttered. “I can give you until the end of November but that's it. Even that's probably too long. All the other good mechanics will be snatched up by then.” 

“You're welcome to hire one of them now, but they're not me,” she said, borrowing some of Jaime's arrogance for herself. 

He sighed in resignation. “The second you know either way, you'll tell me?”

“Yes. You'll be the first to know after Lannister Corp.” 

“And you'll consider my team first, before anyone else's? Give me a chance to meet any other offers?”

Brienne tilted her head, taking him in. She'd never imagined she would have this kind of chance to make Hyle Hunt's life easier or harder, and while she wouldn't have searched it out, she had to admit she was enjoying it. “I suppose,” she finally said, and he exhaled in relief. “But even if you meet it it's not a guarantee I'll sign with you.” 

“That's fair, I guess.” Hyle lifted his coffee cup to her in a salute. “You're tougher than I remember.” 

“I've had to be,” she said pointedly, and he flushed and looked away. Brienne took a last drink of her coffee and set it down, then stood to her full height, towering over him. He shrunk back a little in his chair, but there was no disgust or disdain on his face, just a slight worry and a grudging respect. “End of November,” she said, leaving him behind.

* * *

There was a double-tap knock on Jaime's front door and he glared at the television and turned it up louder. 

“Jaime?” he faintly heard. 

“Wrong address,” he shouted. The door opened and he cursed himself for leaving it unlocked after his last food delivery. 

He heard Brienne walk down his short hallway, halt in the doorway to the rest of his apartment, and make a dismayed noise in her throat. “Jaime,” she sighed. “Have you even left your house since you got back?”

“No need, Wrench, they'll deliver anything you want now. Except someone to wash me; I don't suppose that's why you're here?” He scratched his week-old beard growth and grinned at her, feeling a little feral. He hadn't talked to or seen another person all week except the delivery people. 

Bright pink spots appeared in her cheeks, but he could see he wouldn't be charming away her disappointment today. He looked around his apartment, trying to see it as she would, and decided he couldn't entirely blame her; the place was a mess, and so was he. 

After Bronn and Brienne had left Jaime and his luggage in the apartment six days ago, he'd thought that it was the first step towards his recovery, but what he'd realized thirty minutes into being on his own was how fucking hard it was going to be to be on his own. Not just the physical tasks – he'd given up putting his shirts back on hangers after two annoying minutes and thrown them in crumpled balls on the floor of his walk-in closet, and after wrestling with the shampoo in the shower he'd determined going bald might be the best course of action for the rest of his life – but the quiet of his apartment became swiftly suffocating. He hadn't realized how much welcome distraction Brienne and Bronn's daily visits had provided when he was in the hospital, or how much structure he'd built around the nurses' schedules. Racing had been his whole life before the crash and none of that demanded his time any more. Now that he was home, he could do anything any time, but what he did was sit on his couch and grow more despondent and angry at his useless residual limb and the fact that he wasn't behind the wheel and never would be again. 

It had not gotten better as the days grew closer to the next race. 

The anger felt comfortable at first, a cloak he'd worn for so many years it was simple to pull it back around his shoulders once more until Brienne had texted him, and kept texting, wanting to come over, to help, to make sure he was all right even when he barely responded, and the cloak started to choke him like a too-tight collar. Jaime hated texting with just one hand so he quickly switched to voice-to-text, but during the review of whatever cruel, scathing message he initially spit out he'd stare at it before sending and think, _she wouldn't do that_ and grudgingly delete it. It wasn't that Brienne was in his head or he was worried she'd be disappointed, but that he'd somehow, between January and now, become attuned to her moral compass. Brienne's north star was goodness, and Jaime had begun to see it shining in his sky, too. 

It was fucking annoying to realize his own pain was a weapon and sheathe it, though at least it gave him something fresh to be angry about for a day. But once that, too, turned bitter in his mouth, he'd spit it out. It hadn't been replaced by optimism or motivation, though. Instead he'd sunk further down onto his couch and just stayed. 

Now here she was, staring around his messy apartment, taking in his messy appearance, his un-bandaged hand, the WSN race day pre-show already starting. Instead of nagging him or looking at him with pity, she sat down next to him on the couch and turned off the TV. 

“I'm taking you to the park,” she said without preamble. “Go get ready.” 

Jaime glared at her. “Why the park?”

“Because you need fresh air and to be somewhere you won't see the race.” 

“I wanted to watch it.”

“I think that would be a bad idea,” she said firmly. “Come on, I'll help you.” Brienne gestured at his stump. “Isn't that supposed to be covered still?” 

“I got sick of wearing the bandages.” 

“Too bad. Here, give me your wrist.” She held out her hand, big and solid, waiting for him to just lay his tender, aching arm in it like it was nothing. “I won't hurt you,” she insisted.

He lifted his arm and awkwardly held it out, and she curved her long fingers underneath, shifted closer so he wouldn't have to move. Her palm was warm and gentle. “What do I do first?” she asked quietly. 

“Clean it. Softly, it's still sensitive.” 

Brienne nodded and set his arm down to gather all the necessary supplies at his direction before returning, closer this time, their knees pressed together while she took his arm. “Ok,” she said, exhaling slowly. “Tell me if this hurts.” 

Gingerly, Brienne pressed the warm washcloth to his wounds and Jaime inhaled sharply but shook his head when she darted a worried look his way. “Sensitive,” he reminded her, “but not painful.” 

She dabbed the cloth over the sutures, careful as could be, then followed with another to dry them. He shivered from the feel of her breath over his cooling skin. “Now what?” she asked. 

“I'm supposed to rub a cotton ball over the whole area for a few minutes. It helps it get used to sensation.” 

She picked one up and touched it to his skin so softly Jaime smirked. “Harder than that,” he said, “it's not made of steel.” 

Brienne pressed harder, rubbing with firm, smooth motions all over the end of his stump, her other hand holding him steady. When the nurses had helped him they'd been businesslike, gentle enough but he was just one of a hundred tasks they had to do that day in too little time for too little pay. He had not been touched by someone who cared about _him_, whose sole intent was to give him the time and attention he needed. Jaime watched her eyes, the way they burned with focus, with kindness, and he licked his lips. He felt the unfamiliar warmth of being taken care of and he thought he should be ashamed and angry at how much he wanted it, how his soul leaned into the touch, but those feelings never came. Instead he just stared more intently, and fell a little more in love. 

After a couple of minutes she pulled away. “Enough?”

He nodded. “Bandage last,” he said his voice surprisingly hoarse. This she had watched happen enough times that she moved with surety, tight at the stump, looser as the bandage moved up his forearm. By the time she was done his whole body felt compressed, tingling with pressure. 

“Is that good?” she whispered, her hair falling across her cheek. Jaime reached out and tucked it back behind her ear and Brienne turned her cheek into the brush of his fingers.

“Perfect,” he said and he watched red spread like spilled ink all across her chest. “We could just stay in,” he said low and saw her flush deepen. 

She shook her head quickly, and then stood, gently tugging on his elbow to bring him up with her. “Out. We both need it.” 

Jaime looked down at his sweat pants and old t-shirt. “They don't have a dress code at the park, do they?”

“You'll be fine,” she said, grabbing his jacket for him and ushering him out the door. 

“Are there even any parks around here?” he asked as they set out into the crisp air. Jaime hadn't realized the weather had changed, fall having arrived sometime in the last two weeks while he'd been locked away. It was a good day for walking, though he would have preferred holding Brienne's hand while they did. She'd set herself on his right side like a shield as soon as they'd hit the sidewalk, and he should have found it aggravating, should have felt words of bile ready to spring from his lips. None of that happened; instead he breathed in the cool air and wished he could put his arm around her waist and pull her closer. 

“How do you not know that?”

“What good was a park to me? You can't race in one.” 

Brienne pursed her lips, clearly disappointed by his honest answer. “I'm taking you to a walk-through flower garden that's not too far by bus.” 

“By _bus_?” Jaime groaned. 

“What's wrong with the bus?”

“It takes forever, the inside smells like sweaty old socks, and there's always some weirdo lurking around.” 

“You've taken the bus that many times to be an expert, have you?” 

Jaime glared at her. “Once would be enough. Why don't you just call Sandor?”

“Because the bus is always available if you need it. It'll drop us off right by the park.” 

“Aren't you worried we'll be seen together?” he asked, the words so sharp they sliced even his own tongue. 

Brienne's step faltered for a moment and then picked up pace, and though Jaime's arm throbbed he hurried to keep up with her. After two blocks she halted at an empty bus stop. “This one,” she said tersely, and Jaime sat down on the cold metal bench under the overhang. He stared idly at a piece of graffiti that said _suck my dragon!!!!!!!_ with a badly drawn and very phallic rendering underneath. 

“The media was camped outside your house for the first few days,” she said, not looking at him. 

“Did they get bored?”

“I think they were firmly removed. There was a man across the street from your building that I'm pretty sure I saw back at the hospital, too.” 

“At least my father's overprotectiveness of the Lannister name is good for something,” he said, and Brienne's shoulders hunched downward. 

“Did Addam contact you?” she asked. 

“He sent me a couple of messages but I haven't felt like seeing anyone. Oh don't look at me like that, Wrench. It's just...different, being out of the hospital. I needed time.” 

“You should invite him over next week.” 

“You should mind your own business.” 

She shrugged that off. “Sandor can take you to your follow-up appointment. I assume you missed that, too?”

Jaime regretted not going just so he could deny it, but instead he shrugged petulantly. “There's no infection, you saw for yourself. And they can't fit me for anything until I've worked on my desensitization exercises.” 

“Will Payne make house calls?”

“I hope not,” Jaime said, but he could see her wheels turning. They bus pulled up before she could tell him whatever plan was at work in her very responsible brain. When they stepped on, he saw several people's eyes flicker their way, taking in Brienne's tall form and his missing hand with the same amount of surprised disgust. When Jaime caught one man sneering at Brienne he stepped on the guy's foot as they walked by. 

“Hey!” the man yelped, and Jaime gave him his best innocent, wide-eyed look, but Brienne tugged him onward before he could respond. They sat in silence at the back of the bus, Jaime pulling his head in and down, cradling his stump against his stomach. 

Sneering guy got off one stop after they got on, giving Jaime one last glare as he did. Brienne sighed and seemed to relax once the doors closed again and Jaime leaned over.

“You know that guy?”

“No. But I've known plenty of guys like him,” she said quietly. 

A few stops later she tugged Jaime's arm and led him off at their stop, and Jaime took a deep breath once they were back in the sunshine. The bus had dropped them off in front of a wide, welcoming arch flanked on either side by a low stone wall that was clearly all decoration and no protection. There was a sign over the arch that said 'Rhaenys Targaryen Memorial Garden Welcomes You' in a flowery script, vines tracing patterns all around the words without covering them. 

Most of the flowers within were summer blooming and had already wilted or fallen off, but the few hardy fall flowers they saw were bright with color: lovely, purple, star-shaped ones along the walkway; a whole sea of orange, red, and yellow flame-shaped flowers that looked like flickering candles in the gentle breeze; and of course loud puffs of chrysanthemums in red and white and purple. It was soothing to walk side-by-side through the garden with Brienne, the way she would point out the ones she liked, how she stopped to sniff every new type; it was a small window into the romantic heart she often seemed so uncomfortable admitting to. 

Brienne leaned down to smell what the sign said were Eternal Fragrance Daphnes and when she straightened again her eyes were faraway and serious. “I have to tell you something.” 

Jaime brushed his finger over a soft petal, even that small movement awkward with his left hand. “Sounds bad when you start it that way.” 

“It's not bad, exactly,” she said, but she didn't face him. “Hyle asked me to join his team again.” 

“Griffin's Hyle?” Jaime asked, turning to look at her. “The one who-”

“Yes,” she said. 

A dark ball of rage formed in the center of his chest, a black hole sucking away any ease he'd found on their walk through the garden. “I hope you told him to fuck off.” 

“I didn't.” 

“Brienne-”

“I was your race engineer, Jaime, and Tywin's not going to keep a place for me at Lannister Corp Racing now that I'm...not.” 

He glared down at the cheerful flowers. “How can you even consider working for Cunt?” 

“Jaime,” she sighed in disapproval. “I have to consider everything. Right now it's that or I go back to my dad's garage and I don't know if I can just do that.” 

“I'll hire you,” he said, and she dragged her eyes to him, startled. 

“To do what?”

“Anything. Nothing. I've got money invested and I saved even more this year with the win bonuses. It's not a problem.” 

“It's a problem to me,” she said, gently. “I want to work, Jaime.” 

It had been a stupid offer, but he was panicked at the idea of her being gone. He cast about for a way to convince her she'd be doing him a favor but he knew there was no argument he could make that his responsible, hardworking, beloved Brienne would agree with. “So did you tell him yes?” 

“I told him I'd let him know by the end of the season.” 

Jaime recalled the races left to be run: the Storm's End Grand Prix was happening that afternoon, then Dragonstone, the track where Aerys had died, two weeks after that. A week later was Maidenpool and the final race of the season two weeks afterward in King's Landing in mid-November. That gave him a little over a month to convince Brienne to stay, or at least to figure out a reason she'd agree to be saddled with him and his baggage while she explored any of the other, better options in her life. Even working for Hunt's team had to be preferable to hanging around with a depressed, angry cripple that was too scared to tell her he was desperately in love with her and too selfish to let her go. 

_I'm the total package_, he thought bitterly. 

“Would you be his race engineer?” Jaime asked, trying to sound casual over the idea of her being the voice in Hyle's ear instead. 

“Gods no,” she said quickly. “Just his mechanic. I couldn't work that closely with him.” 

He couldn't stop the relieved sigh. “Give yourself time to think about it,” he said. “You never know what's going to happen by the end of the season.” 

She nodded and chewed her bottom lip. “Anyway, I don't even know if I can do all this again. If I can be on the road so long and so far away from...” her eyes flicked towards him and away as fast and erratic as butterflies. “From home.” 

Jaime wanted to kiss her in that moment more than even the first time, or the last. She licked her thick lips and he leaned towards her, there among the end-of-the-year flowers, and she didn't pull away. He took a slow breath, the air thick as honey in his lungs. _Patience_, he urged himself as her mouth opened a little in anticipation. _Give her a reason to stay._ With a restraint he didn't know he was capable of, Jaime kissed her cheek, pressing his lips soft but quickly to the freckles there, and then pulled away in time to catch what he thought was a flicker of disappointment in her eyes. 

“Thanks for getting me out of the house,” he said.

Brienne blinked at him, wide-eyed. “You're welcome.” 

“I was scared to leave it,” he admitted suddenly, driven to honesty by the softness of her eyes. 

“Scared of what?”

He gestured a little with his stump. “That I'd be weak.” 

“You have to do your physical therapy,” she said. “Go to your appointments. Let your friends visit.” 

He couldn't withstand the heat from the deep blue fire of her eyes, but he was helpless to look away. “Why?”

“Because you're more than just a hand.” 

Jaime didn't see how that was true when it was his hand that let him drive, and driving was the only thing he had ever been good at. But Brienne looked so sincere it was hard to disagree out loud. Instead he sidestepped her words entirely. “Dragonstone Grand Prix is in two weeks.”

“Do you want to watch it?” 

Jaime hadn't watched a race at Dragonstone since he'd killed Aerys, trusting his extreme knowledge of the track to prepare him instead of the usual footage review he did for every other Grand Prix. He was certainly not going to start watching it now. He shook his head no. 

“Then I suppose we have another bus ride in our future,” Brienne said, her lips twitching into a satisfied grin. 

Jaime groaned.

* * *

They stayed at the park for hours, talking about the flowers and the weather and what their expectations were for the upcoming crop of holiday action movies. Then when it was time for the grand prix's start, they stepped back onto the bus and stopped at the coffee shop across from his house until it was too late for him to catch the race when she left him at his door. 

“Do you want to come in?” he asked, oddly nervous, but Brienne shook her head. 

“I shouldn't. This was nice, though.” She took his hand and squeezed it, and then she was gone and Jaime cleaned up all the trash in his apartment while he tried to ignore the TV sitting dark and quiet on his wall. Once the last container was shoved in the trash chute, Jaime sat down on the couch and turned on the TV to catch the post-race recap. It was strange seeing the cars whizzing by on the screen yet not knowing anything that had happened, like he was suddenly distanced from his own life, a visitor to something he'd once known so intimately. Jaime had driven with the flu, with sore muscles, and even, back in F3, a cracked rib, but the only thing that had ever kept him from missing a race was crashing during it, and even then he was still down at the track on race day. 

The commentators announced that Oberyn had come in first and that led into a discussion about Robb placing second, about how many races until he would overtake Jaime in the World Championship now that Jaime couldn't defend himself at all. He clenched his left hand on his knee, felt the phantom movement of fingers on his right hand doing the same, but when he looked down they were still gone and so too, soon, would be his lead. He shut off the TV again and sat in the dark, watching the red-gold sunset fading from the sky. 

Of all that he'd lost because of the crash, knowing that the championship would likely never be his hurt the most, the almost-thereness a fresh cut to his scarred heart. Jaime breathed through the sharpness slicing at his throat and heard a small ding on his phone of a message received. When he glanced down at the screen, there was a text from Brienne. She'd taken a picture of someone's bare feet on the bus and added the words 'something to look forward to next time' and he tipped away from the edge of the spiral he wanted to fall in, tugged back by the memory of the calm sea of Brienne's eyes, her gentle fingers, and her steady belief that he was worth standing by. 

And over the next two weeks, without his really noticing it at first, she helped him start to build a new routine to his life. 

That bus ride had not been their last. She would text him in the morning to remind him to check and change his bandage and then she'd ask if he was free later, like he ever had anything else to do, and they'd make plans for the afternoon which she never let Sandor drive them to. But though the smell of the bus didn't change – and in fact only got worse on rainy days – Jaime grew more comfortable with it and started noticing the routines of their fellow afternoon riders. 

There was Mrs. Peake with her tiny chihuahua that she hid in her huge purse; the little girl on the stoop the bus driver waved at whenever she was out watching them go by; the dark-skinned teenager with spiky, neon-colored hair who glared sullenly at all of them until a little over a week after Jaime and Brienne's first trip, when the weather had been unseasonably warm and Jaime felt comfortable enough to wear a t-shirt, that the young man sat down next to Jaime and said “you too?” before tugging up his baggy pants to show his prosthetic foot. The next day, on his way with Brienne to a cupcake shop right next to the memorial garden, Jaime and the teen had exchanged knowing nods, bound together by their shared difference. 

In-between the outings, Jaime went to his appointments and he let Payne train him into a sweaty puddle, and he would text Brienne after both, beaming when she'd respond with a smiley face or a 'good work!' 

They weren't having sex and they weren't talking about racing and Jaime had to wonder if maybe she did actually _like_ him, that she was spending so much time with him out of more than just misplaced guilt or sympathy. Even in the flurry of weeks they'd been together, they'd mostly either been working or fucking; now they were sharing daily domestic space and the simplest of activities and by all rights he should have been sick of her or at the very least bored, but he was just so happy to see her every day it didn't matter what they did. She certainly never treated him as less than he had been; if anything she expected more of him than ever, including sitting stoically on his couch for an hour one day while he figured out how to put his shirts on his hangars with one hand, complaining the entire time. 

“If it's that much of a problem,” she said at one point, “just fold them and put them on shelves.” 

“I can't put them on shelves, they'll wrinkle and then I'll have to iron them, too.” 

“Then you better figure this out, hadn't you?” 

He'd stuck his tongue out at her and briefly felt almost himself. 

Bronn, who had given up texting him long before Brienne had, came over on the Saturday after the Storm's End Grand Prix, gave Jaime a knowing once over and drawled, “you need to shave.” Jaime rolled his eyes and let his friend into his apartment just to hang out for the first time in their long acquaintance. 

A few days after that, he opened the door nervously for Addam. “Hey,” he said, and Addam smiled and held out a six pack of cheap domestic beer they hadn't drunk since they were teenagers. 

“I figured your taste probably hasn't gotten any better,” he said dryly, and Jaime had laughed and let him in, too. 

Sunday of the Dragonstone Grand Prix, he was relieved to head out with Brienne again and leave this race in particular behind. Jaime had no interest in compounding his pain by sitting on the outside of a race at the track that had changed his life. While their trip to the memorial garden wouldn't even have been interesting enough to make it onto one of the many promotional social media videos he'd had to do through his career, by the time Brienne gave him a small wave goodbye back at his apartment, he felt warm from the sunshine of her laughter, emboldened by the way he'd handled a small child staring wide-eyed at his arm. 

He took a steadying breath and turned on the post-race recap. They were showing the final lap, Stark's grey and white car, his number in deep green, hurtling down the straightaway under the checkered flag. 

“And with that,” the commentator said, the camera cutting to Robb standing on his car in the parc fermé, holding his steering wheel in his two good hands, “Robb Stark is now in the lead of the driver championship standings.” The list of names appeared on the screen, Jaime's at the top, and then the graphic swapped his name with Robb's with a simple flourish. Robb had passed him by only the smallest handful of points, an amount that would have been nothing months ago but were, now, entirely insurmountable. The same amount of points as Jaime had fingers yet in an instant the news crushed any last hope that the world championship would be his. 

What surprised him, seeing Robb's name just above his on the standings list, was why it didn't hurt _more_. Jaime felt numb, like whatever response he should have had was gone and replaced with nothing at all. He had worked his entire life for the moment he could stand on the podium knowing he'd won it all, that every sacrifice and bad decision had been worth it, and now that moment would never come and all he felt was...empty, like a vessel waiting to be filled. 

Unexpectedly he thought of Brienne buying them warm cookies at the coffeeshop that afternoon and how she'd given a satisfied little moan when she'd bit into hers; of Calon, his fellow bus-riding amputee, who'd fist-bumped his stump yesterday on his way off the bus; of how he and Addam had started texting each other regular updates on their various workouts, familiar patterns of giving each other shit and cheering each other on that made Jaime ask Payne to push him harder during their sessions. Small stones built on a path that led him away from everything he'd ever known and ended at a destination he couldn't see. 

He trembled at the fork between despair and hope, watched Robb's car taking an esse that Jaime knew he'd never drive again, and then looked at the photo he'd saved as the lockscreen on his phone of the view of Tarth from the top of the tower in Morne. He'd thought to change it when they first got back after the break, but he couldn't bring himself to, even after Brienne had put an end to what they had. The merging of sky and sea had, when he'd taken it, reminded Jaime of endless possibility. The future had felt limitless that day, like everything he'd ever wanted could be his. 

Jaime shut off the TV and leaned his head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. With a sigh he got up and made himself a frozen lasagna, eating without really tasting it; that night he slept and didn't dream of anything. He dropped like a stone into unconsciousness and then was yanked abruptly awake to blink at the morning light, surprised that the world had kept turning.

When Brienne showed up unexpectedly in the morning and said “You're playing hooky today and I'm taking you to the zoo,” his heart beat once, hard, like it had been jolted to life, a bright sharp gasping pain that made him clutch his chest and pray for the emptiness again. He couldn't breathe through the sudden onslaught of feeling, but then Brienne squeezed his shoulder and the pain receded just a little, just enough for Jaime to exhale shakily, meet her worried eyes with a small, strained smile, and walk with her into the sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaime has some referenced, minor-to-moderate depression and anxiety in this chapter, most intensely in the last five paragraphs, in case those things are triggers for you.


	20. November (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the race at Dragonstone, Brienne had been heartbroken to see Robb officially overtake Jaime in the standings, had thought about going back to Jaime's home that night but wasn't sure if it would be too tender to talk about, if he even knew. They hadn't mentioned racing or the crash at all since the hospital, when Jaime had broken down crying in her arms. While her intention since then had been to distract him in order to help him find his equilibrium, she might have done too good of a job. Even the uncertainty of their relationship, except for his kiss on her cheek their first Sunday back, had become a silent agreement to just not deal with it. For how much they said to each other on any given day, the ghosts of the things they weren't talking about were louder still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all don't know how lucky you are Brynn continues to be my beta, this story would be so much worse. A million thanks to her as always!

“I want to watch the next race,” Jaime said as they sat on his couch and watched the new Serala Darklyn movie. 

“What?” Brienne asked, startled. The movie wasn't good, but it wasn't awful either and she'd been invested rooting for the pop star's attempt to reinvent herself as a mature actress. 

“Maidenpool, in a few days. I'm going to watch the race.” 

“Oh.” She reached over to pause the movie and looked at him. “You're sure?” 

“It'll be fine,” he said and she thought he almost believed himself. 

After the race at Dragonstone, Brienne had been heartbroken to see Robb officially overtake Jaime in the standings, had thought about going back to Jaime's home that night but wasn't sure if it would be too tender to talk about, if he even knew. They hadn't mentioned racing or the crash at all since the hospital, when Jaime had broken down crying in her arms. While her intention since then had been to distract him in order to help him find his equilibrium, she might have done too good of a job. Even the uncertainty of their relationship, except for his kiss on her cheek their first Sunday back, had become a silent agreement to just not deal with it. For how much they said to each other on any given day, the ghosts of the things they weren't talking about were louder still. 

When Brienne showed up unannounced the morning after Dragonstone in case Jaime had been tormenting himself about the championship, Jaime had seemed less upset than she was, except for one brief moment where it looked like he was about to have a full-fledged panic attack. He'd been almost manically cheerful as they wandered around the zoo, eating most of a cotton candy he'd bought to share, pointing out birds that reminded him of different drivers, posing in front of the lions looking entirely too handsome and leonine with his increasingly shaggy, curling hair and trimmed beard and sparkling green eyes. 

His overly-determined zest, his willful ignoring of what had to be devastating, had bothered her all day, though she didn't know what to do about it, if she could or even should do anything, so she'd read up on panic attacks and just decided to go along with what he felt comfortable with. 

“Why don't you come to my house to watch it?”

“My TV is better.” 

“Yes, but-” she hesitated, not sure how to tell him she thought it would be easier if he weren't watching it in his own home. “My couch is more comfortable,” she said and then immediately flushed when he glanced meaningfully at her. The last time they had been on her couch together they'd been naked. “Besides I'm always over here, it'll be good for both of us to have a change of scenery,” she added quickly, trying to get the memories out of both their heads. 

“Fine, we'll watch it on your tiny little TV.” 

“I'm sure you'll enjoy complaining about the size the whole time.” She could see him getting ready to make that into a dick-related joke and rolled her eyes preemptively while unpausing the show. “Keep it in your mouth,” she muttered, and then covered her face with her hands when he just grinned at her. 

The following Sunday, with only five minutes to lights out, there was no sign of him in her apartment and no word that he was even on his way. She frowned at the chips and seven-layer-dip she'd put out on the coffee table. 

Brienne typed a message into her phone: 'still coming over?'

'Yes.' There was a knock at her door. When she opened it, Jaime hovered there looking slightly embarrassed. 

“How long have you been out there?” she asked. 

“About five minutes. Your neighbor gave me the most thorough once over of my life two minutes into it that almost drove me away.” 

“That would be Eddara. She's got that typical northern, take no shit demeanor. I like her.”

“You would,” he said, smiling a little and stepping inside. As she closed the door he looked all around and she recalled with sudden sense memory the last time he'd been here, when they'd been spooned together on her couch and their lives had been, for a moment, simpler and happy. The lilacs he bought her still sat on her counter, but instead of the rest of her apartment being otherwise sterile and empty, it was littered now with mementos from the last couple of weeks they'd spent together: a brochure from the Museum of Modern Art, a keychain he'd bought her at the zoo, the playbill from a matinee showing of what turned out to be a terrible comedic musical. Small signal lights she woke up to every day that reminded her of him and the warmth of his laugh, the glittering promise of his smile. 

There had been moments over the last few weeks when she thought she couldn't bear seeing him another day and not telling him everything, but then the despair that he carefully kept at bay would haunt his eyes and she'd bite her tongue and command herself to patience. _The end of the season_ she silently promised. By then she would have made a decision about her future, have hopefully helped him to find a way forward with his, and then she would tell him all of it and they could see where their hearts ended up. 

Brienne just hoped he'd still be willing for them to end up together, even with her necessary lies. 

“I took the bus to get here,” he said proudly, sitting down on her couch. He leaned back and smiled at her, his left arm resting along the top cushions like an invitation, and she swallowed down an urge to climb into his lap. 

“Good,” she said, turning to grab two beers and joining him at a distance. He nestled the bottle in the crook of his right elbow and popped the top with his left hand, then took a long swallow while she nearly swallowed her tongue. Why this felt like a date when everything else had seemed so innocent, Brienne couldn't say, but she nearly fumbled the remote she grabbed it so quickly to turn the TV on as a distraction. 

“-and he's essentially locked down the championship now that Jaime Lannister is permanently out,” the commentator was saying, and Brienne looked over to find Jaime had gone still. 

“Nothing has been heard from Lannister directly since the crash, but word is he's recovering well and if he's watching today we just want to say we wish him the best. Now, let's see how the racers handle this first notorious curve as we get ready to start the penultimate race of the season.” 

Brienne heard the familiar robotic noise of the lights coming on, then the announcer shouting, “lights out and away we go! Stark leaps to an early lead, with Oberyn Martell and Addam Marbrand, who's at an unexpected p-3 today, hot on his heels.” But she didn't see any of it, watching Jaime instead. 

He'd pulled his arms into his body, had seemed to shrink into the couch as the cars screamed around the first corner and into the straightaway. Jaime's brow was furrowed and his eyes were dark green and shadowed as old forest moss. 

“There's a crash coming out of the first turn,” the announcer said, and the camera cut to the mid-field, where Viserys and Drogo had collided. Drogo was pulling out of it, but Viserys went careening into the wall, and Jaime gasped loudly with the impact, jerking as though he'd been in the car, too. His eyes were so wide she could see more white than green, and he was breathing hard as if he'd been running instead of sitting still. 

“Jaime,” she said softly, turning the TV off again. He startled and turned those wild eyes towards her, darting frantically over her face. “You're here on the couch with me,” she said, her stomach a tight knot of concern, trying to recall the advice she'd read. “I turned off the TV and you're in my apartment.” 

He panted but his ricocheting gaze stilled and settled, pinning her down. His knuckles were bloodless on the beer bottle, his stump pulled tightly into his chest. 

“Do you want me to breathe with you?” 

He nodded and she counted to ten while their chests rose and fell in time, in and out, as barely controlled as the crashing waves on the eve of a storm. She ran them through another set of ten breaths and the wildness subsided. 

“What else do you need?” she asked when he swallowed and unclenched his hand, stretched out his fingers against the round end of his stump. 

“Just a moment. This might have been a mistake,” he said, huffing a laugh that sounded very nearly like a choked back cry. “I'm sorry.” 

“There's nothing to be sorry for. You're not ready. That's ok.” 

Jaime took another drink and then set the bottle down on the table. “Now what?” he asked. 

“How about we go to the park?”

He exhaled unsteadily. “Can we get some ice cream first?” 

“Yeah,” she said, relieved to see some color back in his cheeks. “Of course.”

* * *

Though he put on a bright smile while they had their ice cream and their walk, Brienne could tell Jaime was shaken by his response to the race. She was shaken, too; she felt like she'd been wading through shallow water and had taken a sudden plunge off of an unexpected shelf. Brienne was out of her depth here, but she didn't know how to help him take the next leap. Jaime begged off doing anything the following day, though he called her that night as she was getting ready for bed. 

“Hey,” he said, hesitant. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to say hi.”

Brienne smiled into the phone, warmth flooding through her, like he'd laid a cozy blanket over her chest. “Hi.”

“How was your day?” he asked, and she could hear the smile in his voice. 

“It's Monday, so-”

“Shopping day.”

She laughed a little. “Shopping day,” she agreed. “How about you? How was your day?” 

“I tried to watch the Maidenpool Grand Prix again.” 

“By yourself?”

“Maybe not the best idea, I admit.” 

“How did it go?” she asked, tentative. 

“It went a little better. I was more ready for it this time. But I still turned it off after ten laps.”

“I would have watched it with you.” 

He was quiet for a long time before he finally said, “I know, but...you may not always be there to help. I have to be ready for that. I should go,” he added quickly, before she had time to process or protest it. “I didn't mean to bother you. Good night, Brienne.” He hung up and she blinked down at her phone, uneasy. 

The next day they returned to their quiet routine: Brienne texting him in the morning, the two of them hopping on the bus in the afternoon to try a new Myrish place for late lunch. He seemed back to his new normal, though she could see the tiny fractures now in a way she couldn't before, like a windshield that looked fine from the outside but once you were inside the spiderweb cracks appeared. 

That night, Brienne called Bronn. 

“What's up?” he said, sounding, for Bronn, concerned. 

“I could use your advice.” 

“Car, love life, or other?”

Brienne chuckled in spite of her worry. “Other, I guess. It's about Jaime. He tried to watch the race this weekend and it didn't go well. I wanted to help him but I'm not sure what to do.” 

“Help him what?”

She considered that. “I thought trying to help him build a new life would be best, but maybe he needs to get back to his old life.” 

“He can't do that though, can he?”

“Not exactly, no, but he should be able to watch a race at least if he wants to.”

Bronn hummed a little over the line. “Alright. Sounds like he needs a professional though, not you.” 

“Do you really think Jaime will see a therapist?”

“Have you even asked him?”

“Well, no.” She could _hear_ Bronn's smug eyebrow raise. “So your advice is I punt him off to someone else?”

“Chief,” he said, that one word loaded with annoyance. “My advice is that you shouldn't be solely responsible for the healing of another person, especially when he's a fucking adult. My advice is that you get some professional support in your efforts before you crack apart, too. My advice is that you take the Griffin job if nothing better comes along.” 

Brienne stiffened. “How did you hear about that?”

“How do you think?”

“What did he tell you?”

“Just that Hunt had offered and he didn't want to pressure you. But I could see he was worried about it.” 

She frowned at the phone. “I haven't decided either way yet.” 

“Don't let anyone else make that decision for you. Hunt's not a great driver, but it keeps you in the game and away from Lannister Corp.”

“Noted. Have you talked to Pod recently?” she asked. Podrick had been offered a position with Addam's crew a few days after the accident, and though he'd been reluctant to leave, they had all pushed him to go. 

“You know how the season is,” Bronn said, his voice gruff, and she knew he missed the younger man. 

“Do _you_ want some advice?”

“No, I do not. Goodbye, Chief,” he said, hanging up. She snorted into the phone and considered what Bronn had said. He hadn't been wrong – she could at least ask Jaime first, give him a chance to surprise her. He wasn't quite the man he'd been even before the crash; who knew how he'd respond? 

Brienne nodded to herself. She'd find a way to ask him tomorrow, and the rest of it they could deal with later.

* * *

Jaime waved his stump at her in annoyance. “Why did you pick here? This is a terrible place for me.” 

“That's why we're going,” Brienne said firmly, opening the door to the arcade and releasing a cacophony of beeps, clangs, and muddied music. 

“That makes no sense,” he grumbled, but he went inside at her insistence. 

Brienne followed after and looked around the arcade. There were rows of traditional games in front of them, a whole side of ticket-earning games to their right, and bigger, sit-in virtual reality machines to their left. It was the middle of a school day so there weren't many people here yet, most of them older like them, people for whom this was clearly either a job or an obsession or both. It was the perfect place for Jaime to test his left-handed abilities: challenging, but couched in fun. 

“Air hockey first?” she asked, nodding at the three empty tables tucked in a back corner of the arcade. “You only need one hand for that.” 

Jaime shrugged gamely. “Sure. But you have to use your left hand, too.” 

Brienne put in the dragon and a half worth of coins and the table whirred to life. Jaime positioned himself opposite her and she watched him tentatively grab the paddle, make a few test swipes. She did the same with her left, the movements awkward but not impossible. Brienne set the puck on the table and tucked her right arm behind her. “You sure you can take me?”

He grinned as toothy as a shark. “I'm disabled, not dead. Hit the puck, Wrench, and stop trying to delay your inevitable defeat.” 

In terms of skill with their left hands they were fairly evenly matched, Jaime a little better because he'd been doing everything with his left hand already for the last month. But what Brienne hadn't counted on were his latent driver reflexes, which he put to good use here. She knew F1 drivers' lives depended on their lightning-fast response times when they were hurtling around the asphalt at 180 miles an hour, but outside of the track she hadn't had a lot of opportunity to see Jaime put those responses to use. He was remarkable, his paddle moving fast and accurately, and he beat her 10-6, scoring three in a row in quick succession at the end to earn the win.

Brienne frowned at his wide, gloating grin. “I challenge you to a re-match,” she said. 

He beat her 10-4 the second time; 10-3 the third. 

“Why am I getting worse?” she groused and Jaime stood, stretching his left arm across his body. 

“You're thinking too much.”

“I'm focusing!”

“It moves too fast to focus,” he said patiently. “You have to trust you know what you're doing.” 

“It's air hockey, there's not much to know.” 

“Very dismissive of you, Wrench. I'd think you would hate to be a 'judge a book by its cover' type.” 

Brienne flushed, but his eyes were so soft she didn't feel hurt. “Fine. What am I missing about air hockey?”

“Come here,” he said, gesturing for her to come to his side. She did, standing side-by-side with him at his end of the table. 

She peered curiously at the white and blue tabletop. “It looks the same from my side.” 

“Of course it does.” He turned a little, so her arm was brushing his chest, and he leaned in towards her. “The secret to air hockey,” he said in a soft, almost whispering voice, “is that there is no secret to air hockey.” 

Brienne turned to look at him, but he was closer than she thought and their noses were only a few inches apart, stilling her snarky comeback on her lips. “Oh,” she managed instead, and his mouth twitched into an amused smile. 

“It's just a game. Which means all your big, prepared brain can do is go with it.” 

“But the angles-”

“Don't mean shit if the puck is whizzing by your paddle. You can't unlock air hockey. You just have to know the rules and trust that you can play.” 

His breath was sweet smelling and hot on her cheek.She floundered a little, tugging her lip between her teeth. Jaime's eyes flared with interest, with want, and she had to look away, her chest tight. “Let's try a different game,” she said. 

Jaime's eyes searched her face, but he nodded and stepped back. “What do you suggest?”

They went to a shooting game next, which he was able to mostly handle with one hand, though his arm got tired quickly and his character died before hers. Brienne scooted him around games that required two hands, not wanting to make him feel worse, before they tackled a skee-ball game that Jaime turned out to be excellent at. By the time they were done, he had a fistful of tickets and he was grinning at her. 

“I'm trading these in for one of those oversized pencils,” he said. “Maybe I'll write better with it.” 

Brienne laughed a little, delighted that he'd referenced his missing hand twice today with humor. There was a row of racing games behind him and she grabbed his right elbow impulsively. “One more game first,” she said. 

Jaime slowed noticeably as they got closer and he realized what her destination was, until he finally stopped, feet welded to the floor still several feet away. 

“Why these?” he asked, his voice unsteady. 

“I thought it would be worth a try.” 

“You're wrong.” 

“Jaime-”

“Pretending to drive isn't going to fill some hole in my heart that not being able to really drive left,” he snapped, yanking his arm free. 

“I don't want to fill anything. But it's not wrong to stop ignoring the elephant in the room.” 

“It's a pretty big elephant, Brienne, which side did you want to talk about first: the crash, or how you told me you didn't want to be seen with me but now you won't leave me alone?” 

She inhaled sharply and Jaime tugged his hand through his hair, frustration all over his face. “It's not that I don't want to be seen with you,” she said. The machine next to them ran through its demo and started again, the music tinny and slightly off. 

“No, that's right, it was just sex.” 

Brienne frowned. “It wasn't,” she said, and his head jerked back in surprise. “I thought Bronn told you?”

His eyes were deep and dark, confused and hopeful. “He didn't tell me anything.” 

She stared up at the ceiling for a second to silently curse Bronn and then looked back at Jaime. “I asked him to tell you, when you were in the hospital still, that it wasn't just physical to me. It never was.” If Jaime hadn't known that, then that meant he'd spent the last month accepting her care and her friendship and the promise of a conversation about the two of them while completely at sea, and he hadn't pushed her for more a single time, even when she would have, at least in the moment, welcomed his pushing. Her heart swelled, bursting with everything she felt for him, everything new she was still discovering about him here on the other side of his accident. 

“Then why did you keep insisting it was?”

“We needed the space,” she said, evasive. 

“You said you cared about me,” he murmured, though he kept his distance even now. “You said we'd talk about it.” 

“We will,” she promised. 

“Why not now?”

Brienne folded her arms over her chest. Her heart was still too full and bright inside her. “It's more complicated than you think.” 

“What's complicated? I...I care about you, too. I'm done with racing,” his voice wavered a little as he said it, “we won't work together anymore. All that's left is us.”

She thought of Tywin, who hadn't reached out to his son since the hospital, who hadn't spoken to her since their brief encounter there. A man who would ruin her future prospects and Jaime's chances just out of spite, and some misguided belief he was protecting the Lannister name. She believed he would release those photos still, that he would stir rumors that she and Jaime had been sleeping together the whole time, if only to pay her back for some slight she couldn't even imagine. Hyle was already gunshy about poaching her from Lannister Corp when Tywin was denying everyone else access; he'd yank the opportunity away if she came covered in untrue muck, and she'd never have a chance with any of the other crews. She hadn't decided yet that she'd take the Griffin job, but she wanted the choice, and Tywin would take that from her, too, if he could, and would burn what was left of his relationship with Jaime to ashes to do it. 

But she'd lose Jaime now if she didn't give him something. “I'm scared,” she admitted. 

“_You're_ scared?” The air puffed out of him. “I've been scared every day since I woke up in the hospital. I lost the key to my life and now I'm knocking on doors I've never seen before trying to find something new. These weeks with you have been better than I could have imagined when I first saw my hand, but I can't even look at a fucking racing game without a minor panic attack. And I know that this,” he gestured between them with his stump, “won't last. We can't go on like this forever. So what happens when you go, whether it's to Griffin or back to Tarth? What do I do then? You're scared?” He laughed, one short, sharp, slightly hysterical bark. “Holy fuck, Brienne, I'm _terrified_. I've got nothing without you.”

“That's not true. You've got Bronn and Addam and Tyrion. You've got Calon. You can find something else to do in Formula 1. Even Dayne said-”

“Fuck Arthur Dayne,” he growled, and Brienne went still. 

“Jaime.” He glanced over at her, and the pain in his eyes took her breath for a moment. “You can't replace racing with just me. You need more than that.” 

“I don't know how,” he whispered, strained. 

“Then I'll help you learn.” 

Jaime chuckled bitterly. “Relying on you again.” He wiped his hand down his face, and his shoulders drooped in dismay. “You being the one who teaches me to live without you seems particularly cruel, even for my life.” 

“You don't have to live without me. You just need to make space for other people, other things in your heart.” 

“I can make all the space I want, but it won't help me when they leave again. It's not going to end well. Nothing ever does, not for me.” 

“Your life isn't over, Jaime.” She shifted nearer, grabbed his hand. “There's always another chance to make things better.”

He searched her face, his eyes bright and desperate. “I want you to be right.” 

“Then maybe you need to hear it from someone else, too.” 

“I'm not interested in finding religion.” 

“I was thinking more finding a therapist.” 

Jaime blinked and smiled ruefully. “You're not the first person to suggest that to me.” 

“But maybe I'll be the person you'll listen to?”

He sighed and nodded a little. “Yeah. Maybe.” Jaime brought their clasped hands to his chest. “This isn't our conversation.” 

“I know,” she said softly. “But I'm not ready for it yet. And certainly not here,” she said on a half-laugh.

“It wasn't just physical,” he said, a question and a promise both. 

Brienne smiled, small and sweet. “No.” 

He nodded his head, took a breath, and then nodded his head again. “I want to kiss you so badly right now,” he said, his voice a rumble like the promise of thunder against her fingertips pressed to his chest. He exhaled and let her go. “End of the season, Brienne. I've been doing my best but I've only got a limited amount of good in me.” 

“I don't believe that,” she said, but she was smiling openly now, could feel the width of it stretching her cheeks. She was glad they were in the middle of the arcade or her own willpower wouldn't have been enough to keep from throwing herself into his arms.

“Now,” he said, clearing his throat and looking around like he'd just woken up from an unexpected sleep. “Time for me to kick your ass at air hockey again, I think.” 

Five minutes later she was still smiling when he did just that.

* * *

Five days later, Jaime took a steadying breath before opening the door of Samwell Tarly's office. It led into a small, cramped waiting room lined with shelves overflowing with books and an empty desk with a computer – and more books – on top. There was a door off to the left that was slightly open and a gentle voice floated out saying, “one moment! I'll be right there!” 

Jaime shifted awkwardly on his feet, wondering if he should clear off the lone chair of the books that were stacked on it, but Tarly came out while he was considering where he'd even put them. The man was shorter and younger than Jaime, with a round, open face and a welcoming aura that put Jaime at ease. Tarly smiled and held out his left hand to shake, and Jaime liked him immediately. 

“Mr. Lannister,” Tarly said. “It's a pleasure to meet you.”

“You too. Although you can call me Jaime.” 

“Then you can call me Samwell if you like. Or Dr. Tarly, if that makes you more comfortable. Some people prefer the title. This way, please.” He ushered Jaime into the adjoining office and shut the door behind him. This room was also filled with books, but there were two plush chairs facing each other that were spotlessly clean, with two bottles of water on the table between them. Jaime took one chair and Tarly sat in the other. 

“You said my wife recommended me to you?” Tarly asked, his eyes going soft at the mere mention of Gilly. 

“Yes, she said you helped a lot of people like me.” 

“I try to,” Tarly said with a self-deprecating smile. “Mostly I help people help themselves.” 

Jaime frowned. “Listen, I'm not really into the whole 'how does that make you feel' thing.” 

“You like action, I imagine,” Tarly said, and Jaime nodded. “We can work with that, although I am going to ask you how you feel about things, too.” 

“Fair enough.” 

“Now, our first session is really a chance to get to know each other. You have to make sure I'm the right therapist for you.”

“How will I know that?”

Tarly shrugged a little. “Not to sound too unscientific, but it will feel right. You'll either feel comfortable talking to me or you won't.” 

“It's going well so far, I guess.” 

“Wonderful,” Tarly said, smiling. He looked genuinely pleased, and Jaime relaxed a little in the chair. “I must admit, Jaime, I do know more about you to start with than most of my other new patients. I appreciate you coming all the way to Harrenhal to see me.”

“Your wife is a good advertisement for you.” 

“Oh she's much better than I am,” he said with a small laugh. “I'd be lost without her.” 

“I know how that feels,” Jaime murmured. 

Tarly settled back in his chair as well. “What brings you to my office today, Jaime?”

He lifted his stump. “I should think that was pretty obvious.” 

“You'd be surprised. Many times it's not the traumatic injury at all that brings people to my door, but what that injury has unlocked for people.”

“Well for me, it's this.”

“Why don't you tell me more about that,” Tarly said.

“Why don't you tell me more about you first.” 

“What would you like to know?”

“What makes you any good at handling trauma patients?”

Tarly smiled, looking humble. “I suppose I'm good at listening to other people's pain.”

“What's _your_ pain?” Jaime asked and he had to give it to Tarly: the man did not look bothered in the slightest. 

“That's not really your concern, Jaime.”

“It doesn't seem fair that you know all mine going in, given my notoriety, and I don't know any of yours.”

“We're not here to talk about me.”

“I think it's important. How do I know I can trust you?”

Tarly shrugged, still kind, still unflappable. “You can't. You just have to decide to do it.” 

“Sounds unfair.” 

“You're not paying me to be fair,” Tarly said gently, and Jaime chuckled. 

“What am I paying you for?”

“That's up to you. You could pay me to listen to you talk about your favorite pizza toppings, or to sit in silence for forty-five minutes, or you could pay me for whatever it is that made you come see me all the way from King's Landing.” 

Jaime snorted. “You're pretty good at this.” 

“It is my job.” Tarly looked as unperturbed as when they'd started, willing to take whatever Jaime served up without any interest in judging him. “Now, do you want to tell me more about what happened with your hand?”

Slowly, haltingly, Jaime did. He stared into the kind, attentive face of the man across from him and talked about the crash, about waking up to discover his hand was gone, about how the emptiness had seemed to swallow him whole in that moment with how hopeless his future had looked. Jaime went quiet, staring down at the open space his hand had once occupied. He'd been to his initial prosthetic fitting and the doctor had said all the external scars had healed well, that his interim prosthesis would help continue to shape and strengthen his residual limb, but that the internal scars would need extra time. 

“Do you still feel that emptiness?”

“Sometimes. It's not as constant as those first few days.” 

“Humans are wildly adaptable creatures, even in the face of abrupt, tremendous loss.”

“I should have been more used to loss,” Jaime murmured. He felt Tarly's eyes focus a little more intently, and he shifted in his chair. “Regardless, I'm here now because I can't even watch a race anymore.” 

“Do you still want to?” 

Jaime pulled his head back, frowning. “What kind of a question is that?”

“One meant to make you think about the actions you're taking in your life. Do you want to watch racing because you think that you should, or because you want to?”

“I-” Jaime pressed his lips closed and considered it. Racing had been a part of his life since he could walk and he was fairly certain the media legend that his first word was 'car' was actually true. He may not be able to race anymore, but it didn't mean he wanted to cut it out of his life completely, as thoroughly and quick as he'd lost his hand. “I want to,” he said firmly. 

Samwell smiled. “Then I can help.”

* * *

When Tywin Lannister summoned people, they always arrived, no matter how little time they had or how much they would rather be anywhere else. Jaime had always admired that ability of his father's, even while he'd hated being on the receiving end of it. It was why he was in front of the Lannister Corp Racing offices the next morning, staring up at the glass-walled building he hadn't been to since before Harrenhal, his heart pounding in his chest and trying to remember the breathing technique Samwell had taught him. 

After a long day of travel and therapy, Jaime had texted Brienne that he'd talk to her today before collapsing into sleep last night, but he'd woken up to a message from Tywin summoning him to the office and Jaime had lain in bed glaring at it. There had been a follow-up text from his father as well, short and to the point: 'Immediately' and Jaime marveled that one word could feel like a gut-punch. 

Jaime had showered and dressed and eaten, decided to take the bus as a reminder that he could still operate independently in the world, and though he had ultimately responded to his father's demands, it was on his own time at least, arriving late morning in a cold, drizzling rain. 

_I can't do this_, he thought, stuck outside the doors, staring at his reflection in the mirrored wall. For a moment he imagined the hand he saw clenching into a fist was his right one, could feel the fingers there taut and aching. He exhaled slowly, counting down from five to one and both of his hands – real and imagined – relaxed. 

His father could have come to his apartment at any time over the last month and a half, could have sent him a message or even a fucking get well card, but as soon as Jaime had stopped being useful, Tywin had thrown him away. He couldn't imagine why Tywin wanted to meet today, but knowing his father, it couldn't be good. Still, they held no leverage over each other anymore and for the first time in his life, Jaime and his father would be on equal footing. 

_I_ can_ do this_, he told himself, and took the first, most difficult step towards the door. Each one after that was easier, though when he reached for the handle it was with his right arm first, a muscle memory from years of walking through these doors in every mood possible. This might have been the first time he ever felt free when he did. 

The lobby looked the same, though the front desk receptionist's wide-eyed stare was new. 

“Mr. Lannister,” she said, standing quickly. Her gaze went straight to his missing hand. “Welcome back.” 

Jaime had never more viscerally understood the 'my eyes are up here' problem women suffered until he'd lost his hand and it inevitably became the only thing people noticed. “Is my father in his office?” he asked, and she nodded at his stump. He took the side door that would go around the main floor, not wanting to expose himself to whoever else was in the offices today. With the final race of the season five days away every corner would be busy, packed with engineers and mechanics trying to get the best they could out of one last ride. All of that attention would be solely focused on Lancel now, and he bitterly hoped his cousin wouldn't waste it. 

The back stairway was empty, though he passed an engineer pulling out a cigarette as Jaime exited on his father's floor, and the man just nodded, harried, as he rushed by. Jaime felt the ironic accomplishment that he hadn't smoked since Harrenhal, either. He'd had plenty of other things to distract him. 

The richly carpeted hall to his father's office was mostly empty, though Tywin's personal assistant, Myrielle Lannister, another one of Jaime's cousins, was typing something on her laptop. She glanced up and took Jaime in with a swift, calculating, very Lannister-like stare, hesitating only briefly on his stump. 

“Jaime,” she said, giving him a professional smile. “Your father has been waiting for you.” 

“Good. Is he in there?”

“Yes, he's on a call-” Jaime pushed through the door anyway, ignoring her indignant “wait!”, and shut it firmly behind him. 

Tywin sat with his hands folded on the desk, obviously not on the phone. He lifted a snow-white eyebrow. “Took you long enough to get here.” 

“A man needs his breakfast, Father. Most important meal of the day.” The sharp, careless grin Jaime had perfected over the decades settled on his lips once more. He sauntered into the room, looking around. There were pieces missing from the last time he was here, empty pedestals that had once held what Tywin valued most. Likely out for cleaning or repair, his treasures worth more attention than his own children. 

His father stared directly at the space where Jaime's hand had been, his gaze traveling up his right arm to his face, a thorough evaluation and judgment performed in seconds. “You look well,” he said, and the polite kindness tripped Jaime up. 

“I am well,” he managed. “What do you want?” 

Tywin nodded, looking appreciative. They were long past needing to be falsely courteous with each other; neither man had time for dances they knew would end bitterly either way. “You still work for Lannister Corp and I have a job for you.” Jaime held up his stump and Tywin frowned. “Don't be absurd, I'm not asking you to drive,” he said to Jaime's silent question. “They want to do some sort of honorarium to you at the race this weekend and I want you to go.” 

“No,” Jaime said almost before Tywin had finished. “Absolutely not.” 

“It would be good for the company if you-”

“Fuck the company,” Jaime bit out, his jaw so tight it ached. “I'm not going to be paraded around like some sob story so the company can look good.” 

Tywin's cold eyes narrowed. “I'm not asking, Jaime, I'm telling you as an employee of Lannister Corp Racing. You will attend the ceremony they have planned and you will accept whatever it is they give you and you will be gracious about it.”

“I quit,” Jaime said, and Tywin straightened, shock lighting his eyes. 

“Excuse me?”

“I quit,” Jaime repeated. “If I had my contract in front of me I'd tear it up to make my point, but I think you understand. I'm done with Lannister Corp, and with you.” 

“Brienne Tarth is not,” Tywin said, and Jaime's whole body tensed. “She is still a Lannister Corp employee.” 

“Not for long, I assume.”

“She could be for longer, under certain circumstances.” 

Jaime's fingers twitched against his leg. “This is low even for you,” he snarled. 

“You have no idea how low I'll go to protect our legacy,” Tywin said, his voice weighted with threat. In all his life, Jaime had thought he'd felt every emotion it was possible to feel about his father, but for the first time he felt a deep, twisting fear. Tywin Lannister was single-minded in a way even Jaime couldn't match, and he lacked any ounce of empathy to soften it. 

“What do you propose?” Jaime asked tightly. 

“You do as I tell you and we keep Brienne for another year as a mechanic for whoever replaces you as driver.” Tywin didn't offer the alternative; they both knew what it was. 

If she stayed with Lannister Corp then she'd still be in King's Landing, still be near enough to Jaime that they could see each other in-between races. Assuming she wanted to see him. Assuming that working for Lannister Corp was even something she'd consider. And if she found out she only had the job because Jaime had bargained his father into it, it would devastate her. He could not take her success and twist it just to keep her near. 

Jaime leaned forward and tapped his fingers on Tywin's desk in time with his response: “I. Quit.” 

He turned his back on his father and was near the door when Tywin said, “I know you were fucking her.” 

Jaime halted, staring at the dark wood in front of him. It was very quiet in the office, like the air itself had gone still. “What?”

“You and your race engineer. I have photos. I know what you were doing together before the crash.” 

A slow boiling rage started in Jaime's stomach. He turned his head to the side. “We're not any longer.” 

“I know that, too.” 

“And?” He turned a little to look behind him at Tywin, who was pressing his hands hard into his desk.

“I can make sure everyone else knows, as well. How kindly do you think the racing world will look upon the first woman race engineer sleeping with her driver?” 

Jaime's chest heaved with his barely controlled fury. “I'm warning you, don't drag her any more into this than you have.” 

“Or what? You were the one who pulled her into this, Jaime, not me.” 

With a slow, careful turn, Jaime stalked back to his father's desk, was gratified to see doubt on the older Lannister's face. He channeled thirty years of his father's example as he said in a tone sharp and gleaming as steel, “If you do anything to her, I will destroy you.” 

“How?” Tywin asked, though his tone was not as confident as it had been. “You have no leverage here. You never did.” 

“This,” he said, lifting his stump, “gives me leverage in the court of public opinion. You're so concerned about the Lannister reputation, how much do you think the media will love hearing about how Tywin Lannister wouldn't even visit his son in the hospital?”

“I paid for your care and your therapy.”

“A bribe for not being there.” 

“Even for you this is weak,” Tywin said, but his eyes flicked away for a moment before focusing on Jaime's stump. 

“I'm not going to your fucking function, and you will not retaliate against Brienne because of it. Find some other trained monkey and amputate his hand. I'm done.” Even as Jaime said the words, a sick worry shuddered through him, a thought so vile Jaime pushed it aside. It had been an accident, nothing more. It had to have been. 

This time Jaime made it out of Tywin's office without either of them exchanging another word.

* * *

Brienne was sifting through her stack of bills when Jaime texted her. 'I need to talk to you, can I come over?' it said, and her heart started pounding. 

'Yes. I'm home.' 

'Be there as soon as I can.' 

She stared at the piece of paper in front of her and then put the mail away again, knowing she wouldn't be able to concentrate while she waited for Jaime. He'd been gone all day yesterday for his first therapy appointment and she'd been too embarrassed to text him again this morning when he'd promised he would be in touch. Jaime may have been more upfront with how lost he feared he'd be without her, but Brienne felt it just as deeply. She'd talked to him every day since that first visit to the park, and though she'd started out helping Jaime because she loved him, because he needed a friend and someone to help light his way while he floundered in the dark, over time the daily visits, the morning texts, the occasional late night phone calls, had all become as important and necessary to her as eating everyday. Soon she'd have to ask herself the lingering question that she hadn't wanted to face: what was _she_ going to do when it all came to an end? 

Based on his text, it might be even sooner than she wanted. 

Forty minutes later, there was an urgent knock on her door, and she hurried over to let Jaime in. He was dressed casually in jeans and a thick sweater, but it was the only casual thing about him. His handsome face was tight with worry, his eyes burning darkly. 

Brienne shut the door behind him, watched him stand in the middle of her apartment like he wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. “Jaime,” she said gently, “what's wrong?”

“I saw my father today,” he said, and she inhaled sharp and loud. 

“Where? What happened?” 

He turned to face her. “At the offices. He wanted me to go to some honorary event at the race this weekend and I told him no. I quit, actually,” he said, his broad chest moving once with a huff of brilliant laughter. “He didn't like that.” 

“What did he do?”

“He threatened you,” he said softly. “Not physically, but...” Jaime searched her eyes. “He knows about us, about what we were doing.”

Brienne licked her dry lips, her heart racing. Though she'd been waiting for this moment since September, she wasn't ready to face it. “I know.” 

“You know?” Jaime's stormy eyes cleared. “He told you, too.” 

“Yes.” 

“When?”

“September,” she whispered. 

“_September_?” He exhaled, shaky. “That was why you broke it off.” A statement, not a question, but Brienne answered it anyway. 

“Yes. He had pictures, he said he'd use them against us both.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“Jaime, I shouldn't have lied to you, I'm so sorry.” 

“Why did you? We could have talked about it, worked something out together. Instead of...” the remembered agony filtered over his features. 

“If I'd said anything to you, he would've ruined your entire season,” she said, knowing how bitterly ironic the taste of that was now. “He would've fired me and I was afraid you would have left, too, even with all you were winning. That wasn't fair of me. I should have trusted you.”

Jaime deflated in front of her, like she'd pricked his heart and let the life flow out of him. “No, you were right. It _was_ me,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I know my father, Brienne, and I know myself. I'm sorry I got you into this; if I could have just waited until the season was over, if I hadn't pushed you on Tarth, he would've had nothing.” 

“I took that step with you,” she said fiercely. “I could have said no.”

“I should have just stayed in King's Landing and protected us both.” 

“I'm glad you didn't,” she said softly, and his eyes sharpened, the light catching the hints of gold in their depths. “So you're going to the race on Sunday?”

“No,” he said, and her stomach dropped. If he'd still refused then that meant Tywin would release the photos, would start an offensive against her in the media that she would have to return to Tarth to hide from. 

“But I thought-”

“He won't do anything,” Jaime said, stepping closer. “At least not right away. I don't have much leverage but I used what I could. We'll be fine until the season is done for sure, which gives us time to come up with a plan.” 

“A plan to do what? Steal the evidence?” She could hear the fear loud in her own voice, but she couldn't control it. Her future had not truly been in her own hands for months, but now even the comforting lie that she could still do something about it herself had been taken away and she could only watch from afar, her career the rope in a tug-of-war between Jaime and Tywin. 

“You take the Griffin job and then we go public with everything ourselves before he gets a chance to salt the earth ahead of us.”

“I don't want the Griffin job.” She hadn't said it out loud to anyone else yet, but every time she thought of late nights and long days with Hyle Hunt, knowing Ron Connington would always be one garage over, her stomach had done a particularly acrobatic somersault in disgust. 

“Then what do you want?” he asked, his tone rough with frustration.

“I don't know! You, mostly!” she snapped, and he jerked his head back, blinking rapidly. 

“Me?”

She flushed. “Is it so surprising? I never stopped wanting you.” 

“Even now?”

“More than ever.” He’d captivated her since her father's garage, back when he’d been arrogant and angry, when his love of the cars had been, she thought, the truest thing about him; now that she knew all his curves and straightaways, it would be impossible to stop wanting him. It was her turn to move nearer. “I never would have ended things between us if your father hadn't stepped in.”

Jaime tilted his head and gave her a small, sad smile. “Yes, you would've.” 

“No.” Brienne shook her head. “It wasn't what I wanted.” 

“Maybe not then,” he said, “but it would've been eventually.” He tenderly cupped her face with his palm, a warm pressure that made her shut her eyes for just a moment to enjoy the feel of him again. They were together every day and still she missed him. “You wanted us to keep things secret because you needed to protect yourself, and I did it but I never really understood why. I understand it now. But I also understand that I couldn't have done it the way you needed me to. Truthfully, I could never do it.” His fingers slid to her neck, tightening there, and he tugged her head down to press his forehead to hers. “I cannot love you quietly.” 

Her heart ignited with nerves and desire and _love_, as loud as thunder, as loud as the universe itself reflecting back to her everything she had been aching to say, everything she'd ever wanted to hear across the long stretch of her whole, lonely life. “Jaime,” she whispered his name like it was precious, her own feelings too big to speak out loud. They breathed together for a moment and then he pulled back to kiss her forehead, a promise full of softness and steel. 

“And because of that,” he said as his hand slipped away, his voice as gentle and firm as his lips had been, “I can't be with you unless I can be _with you_. Outside of the bedroom, in public. I want to hold your hand when we go to the park. I want to taste the little bit of ice cream that always catches at the corner of your mouth. I don't want you to be afraid of being seen with me. I can't do that again.” 

“People will talk about us,” she said and his lips curved with regret. 

“They will.”

“They'll say terrible things,” she whispered. 

“They might.”

“I don't want to choose between you and my career.” 

“You don't have to,” he said firmly. “I can wait.” 

“Wait for what?”

“For you to be ready.” 

She splayed her hand across his chest, and though he looked calm on the surface, beneath the soft fabric of his sweater his heart was pounding. She couldn't make this fierce and gentle man wait even longer for her to be brave, no matter how much she yearned for him. “It's too much to ask,” she protested against the wailing of her heart.

“It's not,” he said, and he laughed, looking self-conscious. “I've been in love with you this long already, I can wait a little more.” 

Her fingers curled a little into his sweater and he covered her hand with his. There were high spots of color in his cheeks as he licked his lips. “But gods you cannot look at me like that when we're alone,” he said in a strained voice, and Brienne exhaled and looked away, blushing. Her hand fell back to her side. 

“If you're sure?”

“I've never been more sure of anything in my life,” he said seriously. “You've done so much for me. Let me do this for you.” 

They had spent so much time together, not just over the last month but since she'd first started working on his crew, she thought she knew every nuance, every shade of green his eyes could be. Jaime had been furious and sad and elated and lost, but she had never seen him look like this: like he was staring at his whole future just waiting for it to open up before him, happy to wait as long as he needed until it did. 

She blinked rapidly to hold back tears and nodded, looking down. “Alright. So now what?” she asked the floor. 

“Well,” he said after a pause, “we still have to figure out what to do about my father, in case he decides to make a move we'll all regret. And you have to figure out where you're going to end up. And I guess I need a new job,” he mused. 

Brienne glanced up to find he was smiling, as light-hearted as she'd ever seen him, even before the accident. There was something loose and free in his face, a weight that had been bearing him down finally fallen away. She felt the same in her own heart, with the patient promise of his love curled inside. “That must have been a damn good therapist,” she said, and Jaime laughed, the sound bouncing gaily around her apartment. 

“Let's go get lunch and I'll tell you all about it.”


	21. November (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were showing the three drivers in the post-race room, their handshakes and congratulations. Oberyn pounded Addam on the back, beaming at his teammate. Jaime regretted that the only time he'd had a teammate he could have shared that experience with that he'd driven him away. This season had been the first time Jaime had felt like he'd had a team at all, that it hadn't just been him against everyone else. 
> 
> He glanced at Brienne and remembered her so early on telling him he wasn't alone. She'd been by his side every day since to prove it to him. He'd had no idea how lucky he was that day in Selwyn's garage when she'd taken his hand and agreed to be his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theworldunseen assures me that Friday counts as a weekend and I've got plans all day Saturday and Sunday, so here you go. :D I am also only one chapter ahead of you all now, so I need to get some serious writing done in the next several days or the next update won't be until NEXT weekend to give me some breathing room. Fingers crossed.

A letter arrived the next day informing Brienne she was terminated from Lannister Corp Racing, along with a stern reminder of her NDA that meant she could not share company secrets or become someone else's race engineer for two years, and she showed it to Jaime with only slightly shaking hands. Jaime wasn't sure if it was an initial volley before the barrage or if it was the only shot that was coming, but he read the terse words with regret. 

“Fuck, I'm sorry,” he said. 

“I haven't worked for weeks, it's not a surprise.” 

“No, but the timing is suspicious.” She met his eyes and he could see she'd run through the same scenarios he had. 

“What do we do?” 

He shrugged, helpless. He still could only think of one solution and Brienne wasn't willing to do it. “We may only have the one choice,” he said tentatively, not liking the panic that immediately flared in her eyes. 

“We have a few more days,” she said. “He may not do anything at all. It serves no purpose when neither of us works for him anymore.” 

Jaime took the trembling paper from her hand and set it down. “Have you ever heard of Reyne Motors?” he asked quietly. 

“They made engines, right? But they went bankrupt a long time ago.” 

“That's the story my father wants the public to hear, but it's not the truth. Nearly forty years ago Lannister Racing partnered with Reyne to supply the engines for our race cars. After a few years of increasingly stingy bargaining on behalf of my grandfather, Reyne Motors decided they no longer wanted Lannister dragons at the expense of their dignity, and they took to the papers and radio to complain, loudly, about Lannister Corp, and Tywin and my grandfather in particular.” Jaime bent the corner of the paper with his left hand. “At the ripe old age of twenty-five, my father negotiated a hostile takeover on behalf of Lannister Corp, absorbing their engine-building work fully into the company, burning every contract Reyne had with anyone else, and then getting every instance of their logo and name removed from any piece of racing history he could, including Lannister Corp's own files. For all intents and purposes, Reyne Motors ceased to exist in Formula 1.” Jaime met Brienne's wide and horrified stare. “Tywin Lannister doesn't need a purpose to burn everything to the ground, especially when he feels he or the company have been slighted.”

“You're his son,” she whispered, like it would shield them from his father's revenge. 

“That's the only thing that makes me think he'll hesitate. I'm still a Lannister, regardless of his feelings for me. It's why he's bailed Tyrion out of jail before, even though he hates my brother more than nearly anyone. But we can only push him so far before he strikes out, and if he can find a way to hit you without splashing anything on me, he will.” 

“Maybe we _should_ go public first,” she said, but her face was too pale, her blue eyes too dark with worry for him to take her seriously. He wouldn't do it when she looked so terrified, no matter how much he wanted to himself. 

“We have at least a few days, if not longer. Let's think on it some more.” He squeezed Brienne's hand and smiled brightly. “Besides, we have much more important things to decide first, like what snacks to have on Sunday.” 

Bronn had invited them to watch the final race of the season at his house, but Jaime had begged off. He still hadn't tried watching a race again since Maidenpool and he didn't want to have to fumble through his brand new coping techniques in a crowd. He felt safe with Brienne, sitting on his admittedly less comfortable couch, and getting through as much as he could.

She came over early that Sunday wearing an old Arthur Dayne #8 t-shirt, jeans, and an expression that was annoyingly concerned about him. He gave her a bright smile as he invited her in. 

“Not rooting for Lancel today?” he asked, and she looked startled at his teasing. 

“I wasn't really rooting for anyone,” she said. 

“Addam will be heartbroken to hear that.” She looked guilty and Jaime nudged her with his elbow. “I'm kidding, Wrench.”

She smiled uncomfortably. “I just got so used to rooting for you, it felt wrong to cheer for someone else.” 

Jaime considered, in more detail than he should have, kissing her just for that, but he went into the kitchen to get the vegetable platter he'd bought the day before. He suspected the most difficult part of today was not going to be the race, it was going to be sitting alone with Brienne and keeping his distance. Since he'd told her how he felt, since she'd admitted she still wanted him, they had studiously not spent extended time alone together in private. Jaime honestly wasn't sure if that was for her benefit or for his. 

They settled on his couch, bigger than hers so there was at least more space between them, and watched the pre-show activities. There was an interview with Robb Stark, who could only lose the championship today by an extraordinarily unlikely turn of events, but given what had happened to Jaime, the IAF was being cautious about awarding him anything until it was all over. Robb looked distracted, his mind already on the track as the interviewer pressed him with questions they heard every week. Jaime had been on the receiving end of those questions enough times over his career that he could answer them without even thinking, and Robb did well but he was still too earnest about his image, too concerned about every word he said to the media, not wanting to disappoint his team and his father. 

_I guess that's one benefit to not caring about my own_. 

Brienne and Jaime talked idly about each driver's chances, Brienne watching him with careful eyes the entire time. 

“Quit that,” he finally said when her hand had hovered near his on the couch as Lancel ran through his standard issue pablum. 

Brienne yanked her hand back and frowned. “I'm not doing anything,” she said defensively. 

“Your worrying is so loud I can barely hear the television.” 

“Well I'm sorry for caring whether you'll be okay.” 

“I'll be fine,” he insisted. “I talked to Tarly this morning by phone.” 

“You did? On a Sunday?”

“He offered at our session and I wanted to be able to enjoy this with you.” He rubbed his stump over the cool leather of his couch, the sensation less intense than it had been. He'd even tried on his interim prosthetic that morning, but the weight had been unpleasantly unfamiliar and Jaime didn't want to deal with that today, too. 

“Well that's...that's sweet,” Brienne said. “I'll stop hovering, then.” 

“Good.” Jaime sighed. “I just want to enjoy some part of this again, even for a moment.” Her hand covered his, warm and strong, and he turned his over to clasp hers before she could pull it away. “But I appreciate your concern,” he said sincerely before letting her go. 

She was slow to pull her hand back. 

As the final lights out of the season neared, Jaime's stomach buzzed and tumbled, and he focused on keeping his breathing constant, not too deep and not too shallow. _Just breathe like a regular person having a good time watching a race_, he reminded himself. 

Some of his nerves were for Addam, who'd gotten to p-4 today. Addam usually did well at King's Landing and now that Jaime wasn't focused on himself he wished he'd done more then just send his friend a goofy text that morning before the race. Jaime rubbed his hand on his knee while the crews did their last check-ups and preparations on the line of cars. 

“Do you need anything before it starts?” Brienne asked him quietly. 

“A tranquilizer,” he said with a chuckle. “I didn't realize watching it was so much more stressful.” 

One side of her mouth quirked in a smile. “Once we get you in the car, it's out of ours hands. That part can be hard to deal with.” 

“You managed it,” he said. 

“I've had lots of practice being on the outside.” 

The crews retreated and the lights started coming on and Jaime leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his left hand covering his stump as the cars rumbled and then launched when the lights went out. Brienne was in a mirrored position next to him, and they watched the first couple of laps like that until the initial fights and positioning evened out and the real racing began. 

In the end it was Robb's race to lose and he didn't, playing it safe and smart and riding his pole position to a first place win. Oberyn came in second and Addam took his first podium of the season at p-3, which Jaime leapt up and cheered for as his friend's car crossed under the checkered flag. When he beamed down at Brienne in excitement, he was for a moment bowled over by the open joy on her face, the way her eyes were watching him hungrily and he nearly forgot his promise to wait. 

His intent must have been obvious because she flushed bright red and looked back at the TV and Jaime excused himself to the kitchen to put some much needed space between them. He wished there was some way he could convince her that the world wouldn't treat the two of them together as something to be ashamed of, that he could give her his ability to just not care even if they did, but though the path of their lives had been parallel with how they had both been mocked for who they were, the gulf between those paths was wide. 

So he took a breath to boost his willpower and asked, “Do you need another drink?” 

She nodded and he grabbed one for her, tossed it over the back of the couch to land next to her on the seat and she laughed soft and happy while the TV showed the top 3 drivers spinning donuts onscreen. It cut to a Year In Review package that started with, “This season of Formula 1 had an incredible amount of triumph and tragedy,” and Brienne moved to turn the TV off but he stilled her hand. 

“I want to see Addam get his trophy,” he said. The announcer continued on in an overly-dramatic voice and he added, “But you can mute it while we wait.” 

Jaime tried not to watch the TV and Brienne made it easy by engaging him in a discussion on choices Addam had made during the race that distracted him enough he was surprised when she reached out to turn the sound back on. They were showing the three drivers in the post-race room, their handshakes and congratulations. Oberyn pounded Addam on the back, beaming at his teammate. Jaime regretted that the only time he'd had a teammate he could have shared that experience with that he'd driven him away. This season had been the first time Jaime had felt like he'd had a team at all, that it hadn't just been him against everyone else. 

He glanced at Brienne and remembered her so early on telling him he wasn't alone. She'd been by his side every day since to prove it to him. He'd had no idea how lucky he was that day in Selwyn's garage when she'd taken his hand and agreed to be his. 

She turned to say something to him and caught him staring, and her checks went checkered red and white as he knew they would. “Do I have something on my face?” she asked self-consciously.

A knock on the door interrupted his answer and they exchanged curious stares. 

“Did you invite someone else over?” she asked. 

“No. Maybe just a delivery I forgot I ordered.” Jaime went down the short hallway and opened the door to find Peck there with a pretty, brown-haired girl hovering behind him looking nervous. “Peck?” he said, blinking in surprise. “What are you doing here? I'm not giving interviews.”

“Mr. Lannister, I'm really sorry to bother you but it's really important. It couldn't wait.” 

“Jaime,” Brienne's voice floated down the hallway. “You should come here, quickly.” 

Jaime huffed but invited the unexpected visitors in before shutting the door and hurrying back to the TV. Brienne had paused the broadcast and her face was inscrutable as she looked at him. The still image was of Robb on the podium, the world championship trophy being handed his way. 

“I don't need to watch this part,” Jaime said quietly, but she kept looking at him with that very serious face. 

“I think you do.” She pressed play and the roaring of the crowd filled his living room while Jaime watched Petyr Baelish hand off the championship trophy with a pleased smile. Robb was not smiling as he grabbed the microphone from Baelish. 

“I have a message for Jaime Lannister,” he said and the crowd quieted almost immediately. Jaime's heart beat hard and uncertain in his chest, and he gripped the back of the couch with his suddenly weak hand. 

“We all know I didn't really earn this this year,” Robb said, holding out the championship trophy like it was something offensive. “It's mine only by default, which is no way to win. So I won't accept it, either the trophy or the title. If IAF insists on keeping my name attached, there will always be an asterisk next to it so everyone will know who really should have been up here today.” Robb looked right at the camera. “It was an honor and a privilege to race against you this season, Jaime. You were the best I ever competed against.” He set the trophy down on the podium, shoved the microphone back into Baelish's hands, and then walked away, Addam and Oberyn joining him, the camera zooming in on the gleaming silver cup sitting alone as the crowd murmured wildly. 

Baelish glared around, whispering harshly to one of his many right-hand men, who then leaped forward to grab the trophy while the commentators fumbled for something to say. 

“That was unexpected,” one finally started. 

“We're going to commercial,” the other broke in and they seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as the feed cut to an advertisement for the latest Direwolf sports car. 

Jaime exhaled in a loud gale and Brienne touched his arm from where she still sat on the couch, her eyes bright with tears. 

“Did you know?” he asked and she shook her head, no. He felt like his heart had been stretched out, pulled loose and thin as putty and then shoved back together, not yet settled, ready now to be molded into something new. He threaded his fingers through Brienne's, holding on to the one constant in his life from before the accident and after. Jaime knew her imprints would be all over the new shape his heart would take. 

Brienne glanced past him and the gentle happiness in her expression shifted, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Peck?”

“Hi, Ms Tarth,” the young man said timidly from the doorway to the hall. “We're really sorry to interrupt, although honestly this is a pretty great place to have seen that.” Jaime turned his head to glare at the young man who coughed and reddened. 

“What do you want, Peck? How did you even know I was here?”

“I have a lot of contacts in the sport, Mr. Lannister. Mr. Blackwater said you were here today.” His girlfriend, Pia he'd said, was staring in open admiration at Brienne, her brown eyes big and round and beaming. The young woman's teeth were crooked and ill-cared for but she didn't seem to mind as she smiled at Brienne. “We never would have come to your house if it weren't so important, Mr. Lannister. Please, just give me ten minutes and you'll understand. It's about your crash.” 

Jaime couldn't tell whose hand went tighter, his or Brienne's. They shared a long, searching look and then Jaime gestured for Peck and Pia to join them at his dining room table.

* * *

Brienne got drinks for everyone, her mind whirling, while Jaime moved the snacks to the table and the others sat in tense silence. She had not thought about the crash itself, outside of the effect it had had on Jaime, except for those first few hours in the hospital when they were waiting to hear what exactly was wrong and whether he would be okay. It had replayed over and over in her mind in that harshly lit waiting room: the pull out of the pit lane, Ramsay coming up fast and swerving towards him, Jaime's tire exploding, and then his terrible scream, the one she heard in her dreams too many nights afterward. But no matter how many times she pictured it, she couldn't bring herself to watch the actual video and she'd been happy to put it behind them as Jaime had needed more immediate care. She glanced at him now, the tense line of his shoulders as he maneuvered the vegetable plate to the table, the stern blankness of his face when he sat down across from Peck and Pia. He had looked transformed by Robb's act, like he'd gotten through a difficult battle and was ready to rest for a time and recover, but as soon as he started to lay down his arms another threat had appeared on the horizon. She worried what picking up that weight again so soon would do to him now. 

Juggling two beer bottles in one had and two soda cans in the other, Brienne handed them out and sat down next to Jaime at the table, on his right side, as she often did these days to lend that side her strength. 

“What did you want to tell us about the accident?” Brienne said, taking control in the uncomfortable silence. 

Peck took a breath. “After the crash, everybody was concerned about what had happened to Mr. Lannister. As they should be,” he hurriedly added, “but I couldn't stop thinking about how unusual it was. I'd been recording the race while I was onsite doing reporting for the blog, so when I got home I was able to watch it again. They didn't have a great angle, but it was enough to see that what had looked really weird in person was even weirder on video. So I called in some favors with IAF folks I've gotten to know through Grid Kids and was able to get all of the available footage from that area. It's not great, being Harrenhal,” he said, and Brienne nodded, “but it confirmed what I suspected: something was wrong with your car, Mr. Lannister. The tire never should have gone like that, not on the maneuver you made. I checked other races and found you doing the same thing, even this season, with no ill effect.” 

“No car is perfect,” Brienne said when Jaime didn't jump in. “Isn't it possible it was just a freak mechanical occurrence?” 

“It could have been,” Peck agreed. “But it was really bothering me and, well Pia knows, when something gets stuck in my head I can't let it go. So I got all the footage I could from your garage and pit lane and started studying it.” He reached into his pocket and slid a small USB stick into the middle of the table between the four of them. “I didn't need all of it, just the footage from the pit stop right before the crash.” 

Brienne held her breath, but she somehow knew exactly what Peck was about to say before he even opened his mouth.

“I'm sorry to say but your car was sabotaged, Mr. Lannister, by your right front tire man, Vargo Hoat.” 

Jaime's hand crunched his soda can so hard liquid spilled out of it, over his knuckles and onto the table, but he didn't seem to notice, or care. “You're sure?” he asked in a voice as black and threatening as a thundercloud. 

Peck looked sick but he nodded vigorously. “You can't miss it, Mr. Lannister. I mean you can in the rush of the day, but slowed down and zoomed in, he ruined your tire when he was attaching it.”

“He had been nothing but agreeable for months. Why would he do that?” Brienne asked, and though she directed it at Jaime, it was Peck who answered. 

“I wondered the same thing, Ms Tarth. I did some more digging,” she looked skeptically at him and he shrugged, looking almost apologetic. “My work with Grid Kids and the news blog means I run into a lot of people, in a lot of different situations. I'm a quiet guy, but sometimes my silence is a favor.” In an instant her entire estimation of Peck changed; he was charming and sweet as he'd led her to believe, but she saw now there was a core of cunning and curiosity that any great reporter needed to get ahead, well-hidden by his pleasant, conflict-avoidant exterior. Applied with care, she could see him charming what he needed out of almost anyone. 

Peck took a sip of the beer she'd given him and nodded appreciatively at the taste. “He was hired by recommendation of Martyn Lannister,” he said, and Brienne rocked back in her chair, a memory hitting her like a punch to the gut. 

“The night before the race,” she breathed, and Jaime finally tore his gaze away from where it had been boring into the tabletop to look at her. “I completely forgot,” she said. “By the Seven, Jaime, I _completely forgot_.” 

“Forgot what?”

“When we were rebuilding your car the night before the race, I didn't leave until after midnight. I was the last one there and I heard people talking over in Golden Company's garage. It was Hoat. He and Martyn and Ramsay were all talking about something I couldn't hear. They were at the end of their conversation by the time I saw them, and they shook hands and parted ways. Hoat seemed fine the next morning and we had...other things to deal with,” she said, awkward, “but that meeting seemed odd even that night. I should have known better,” she said fiercely, her insides tight with regret. 

“You couldn't have known,” Jaime said quietly. “It's an unthinkable act, that someone would sabotage their own driver.”

“But Martyn-”

“It's not your fault,” he insisted, and she remembered Dayne's gentle reprimand that this wasn't about her guilt, though she wasn't sure she was going to be able to breathe without this rock in her chest for the rest of her life. If she'd done something, _said_ something, none of this might ever have happened, and Jaime would have been on that podium today, not needing Robb to make some chivalrous gesture. 

Jaime laid his stump on her leg, as though he could hear the continuing recrimination in her thoughts. “So Hoat sabotaged my tire because Martyn asked him to? Are they friends or something?”

“That's what's strange,” Peck said, taking up the thread again. “Martyn is pretty open with his social media and Hoat doesn't show up at all in his feed until a month or two before he was hired. I looked up some of the other people Martyn seemed to tag whenever he tagged Hoat and did a little asking around and...” Here Peck seemed to lose his nerve entirely and he opened his mouth and then closed it, stuck. 

“And what?” Brienne asked. “You have to tell us all of it.” 

“I know,” Peck said miserably, “I just don't want to.” On the tabletop Pia entwined her fingers in Peck's, squeezing his hand, and subconsciously Brienne covered Jaime's stump on her thigh with her hand, her fingers loosely circling the end. He was as still and tense as marble beside her, but she could feel his pulse thundering through the tender skin at his wrist. 

Peck took a breath and finished his story. “They're all involved in an illegal gambling ring. That's why it's taken me so long to put all the pieces together, I had to be careful, and I had to be sure. During the race today my contact got me the final information I needed. Martyn was making bets, Ms Tarth, _huge_ bets, in amounts there's no possible way he had the money to afford.”

“He was using someone else's money?” Brienne asked, and it felt like a cruel and bitter dawn was slowly breaking over their heads as each piece slotted into place. 

“Yes. Based on everything we could find, someone at Lannister Corp Racing was using Martyn as a go-between to place their bets. And they were betting against _you_, Mr. Lannister.”


	22. November (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime sat down on the toilet seat and put his head in his hand and wondered when his father had started hating him so completely. Had it truly been when Jaime had gone to Aerys' team? Or had it been before that, when their mother had died and Tywin had started hating everyone, his children most of all. He blamed Tyrion for Joanna's death, but he blamed Jaime and Cersei for her continued presence in his life. Tywin would sometimes stare at the twins and bemoan how much they looked like their mother, especially Jaime. “You have her smile,” Tywin accused him once, his tone suggesting Jaime had stolen it from their dead mother's body. Jaime had not smiled around his father much after that. Since Aerys he hadn't smiled much at all, until this year. Now his father had come to steal it back, and no matter how tired Jaime was he would not let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I might have forgot who I was, but I know who we are_ -Andrew Belle, "Drought"

Jaime threw himself up and away from the table, his chair crashing to the ground behind him. Brienne flinched and stood more slowly, but he held his hand out to stop her and disappeared into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. 

“I'm sorry,” Peck said, miserable, and Brienne sighed. 

“You're just the messenger.” 

They sat staring awkwardly at each other around the table for a minute while the sound of Jaime stomping around the bedroom echoed through the apartment. He didn't appear to be saying anything, at least not that they could hear from the dining room. 

Someone from Lannister Corp – though Brienne was certain she already knew who it was – had been betting against Jaime, wanting him to lose the World Championship the entire time, and had ruthlessly inserted Hoat onto the team to make it happen. She couldn't imagine the betrayal he must be feeling; it was swarming up and choking her and she hadn't even been the one targeted. 

“It's exciting to meet you,” Pia said abruptly into the silence and Brienne stared at the other woman. “I framed the autographed shirt Peck brought home. It hangs right above our bed.” 

“That's great,” Brienne said gamely, before excusing herself to go check on Jaime. 

She knocked on his bedroom door and after a minute he said “come in,” sounding like a man who'd been dragged through all seven hells. 

They stood looking at each other after she closed the door, neither having any idea what to say. Brienne held out her hand instead, and he took it in a desperate grip, holding on to her tightly. 

“What do we do?” he eventually asked.

“We report all of this to the IAF, and the police. We get help figuring out who it was and we take them down.”

“You know who it was,” he said in a broken voice that sank like a dagger in her heart. 

“We need proof. And we need to know why.” 

“_Why?_ Who the fuck cares why? He caused this,” he said, thrusting his stump between them. 

“That doesn't sound like him. Can you really live the rest of your life not knowing why he did it?”

“If I know he's rotting in jail, yes.” 

Brienne squeezed Jaime's hand and the fury went out of him, like a small piece of wood that had burned brightly and was now just dully glowing ash. “I'm going to go back and talk to Peck about what else he knows, what we can do next. You stay here and I'll tell you everything once they're gone.” 

“No,” he said, lifting his head, and she was relieved to see a sliver of determination between the bitter heartbreak. “We'll do it together.” 

When they returned to the table, Peck looked as guilty as though he'd been the culprit. “I'm sorry,” he started, but Jaime glared him into silence. 

“Tell us the rest,” he commanded in a cool voice that reminded Brienne of his father. 

Peck swallowed hard. “There are rumors that Lannister Corp is deeply in debt and getting deeper every day.” 

“How is that possible? My father shits money.”

“That seems to be an illusion. Mostly he loses it. Or the rest of your family does at least. What people say is there have been bad deals and too many loans and overly reckless spending out of Lannister Corp for awhile, even starting with your grandfather, and no one's bringing in enough to make up for it.” 

“Because I kept losing. I must have seemed like a safe bet to lose again this year.” Brienne hated the self-disgust in Jaime's tone. 

“I don't know about that,” Peck said weakly. 

“Has he bet against me in the past?”

“The gambling ring has been around for a little while, but what Martyn was betting this year was the most anyone had ever gone in on it. I don't know more than that.”

“Formula 1 employees have been betting on races for awhile?” Brienne asked, horrified. 

“Yes, Ms Tarth. Seems like it's mostly been people not directly on crews. It's a terrible risk to bet on a sport when you're in the garages themselves, but the people some of Hoat's friends mentioned _can_ be seen at the track on gameday. No drivers have ever bet on a race. Though,” Peck hesitated and glanced at Jaime, “a few have gotten a cut of winnings for nudging things in the desired direction.”

“Ramsay?” Jaime asked, spitting out the name like it was poison. 

“Probably, yes.” 

Brienne was drowning with rage, choking on it; she tried to find some safe shore where she could hold on to ride out her own anger. To think drivers like Ramsay Bolton – men whose greed far outstripped their skills – were allowed on the track with Jaime and Renly and the others, trying to trip up one of their competition just for a cut of an illegal bet. She couldn't bear it. When she looked at Jaime he seemed made of stone, except for the twitch of his jaw, the pulse beating hard at his throat. 

“Is there anything else?” he asked in a gravelly voice. 

“No,” Peck whispered, unable to meet their eyes. 

“We have to report this. Do you have a plan for that?” 

Peck nodded. “Yes,” he said. “And some backups if we need it.”

Jaime leaned forward, all coiled intensity. “Then let's get to it.” 

By the time Peck and Pia left, the plan had been thoroughly hammered out, starting with a visit to Petyr Baelish first thing tomorrow morning. Brienne and Jaime sat on the couch afterward in dismal silence, neither wanting to talk, neither wanting to move. 

“This is not how I expected today to go,” Jaime eventually said and Brienne laughed abruptly, too loud but unable to control herself as her worry and fury and stress snowballed out of her in a hysterical avalanche. Jaime stared for a moment and then he laughed, too, a softer counterpoint to her own. 

When they stilled, Brienne's cheeks and sides were aching and she didn't feel good but she felt better. “I should probably go,” she sighed. 

Jaime wrapped his pinky around hers where their hands were next to each other on the cushion. “Please stay,” he asked softly. “I can sleep on the couch and you can take my bed. But I don't want to be alone tonight.” 

“Okay,” she agreed, and then added cautiously, “but we could share the bed.” His eyes swerved fast to hers, searching her face. “If I'm going to be here anyway, I could use someone to hold onto, and I think so could you. If that's alright. I know it might be too much to ask.” 

Without a word Jaime stood and pulled her up with him, shutting off the lights and leading her back to his bedroom. They were both barefoot already, and she watched him undo his belt with one hand and slide it free, setting it on a chair. For a moment Brienne considered just giving in, walking over and unbuttoning his jeans, sliding his zipper down and giving them both what they wanted. But too much had happened today already and she knew if she took that first step, they'd have to see it through to the end and the immediate future was a grim shadow hiding the way. 

_After we deal with this_, she thought. _After that, I won't wait any more._

They curled together on the bed, facing each other. In-between them, Brienne held Jaime's stump with both hands and she fell asleep under his soft, steady gaze.

* * *

Jaime woke the next morning with Brienne pressed against his back, her arm looped over his waist, and his cock aching. He rolled out slowly from her grip and though she sleepily protested she didn't awaken. He hurried to the bathroom, struggled to pee and then decided to take care of this particular problem in the shower. It was easy enough to stand under the pounding water and grip himself awkwardly with his left hand and think of her, lying warm and spread out in his bed. He imagined returning from the shower to see her blinking at him, her clothes piled somewhere on the floor, her eager hands pulling him near, and he came quickly, biting hard on his lip as he did. 

With a resigned sigh Jaime cleaned himself off and finished his shower. Now that he'd taken the edge off of his physical needs, the memory of what they'd discovered last night, what they were doing today, swarmed forward. 

Peck had said 'someone,' but Jaime knew in his heart it was Tywin. It didn't matter whose fingerprints were on it, the hands would be Tywin's. His father, his own fucking father, had been betting against him, hoping he would lose. The season came into sharp relief now that he could see it clearly, like when he'd learned reading techniques to cope with his dyslexia and the world started making more sense. Tywin had hoped he could rely on Jaime's constant inability to finish, had not anticipated Brienne helping him focus, giving him the space to be the driver Jaime knew he was. No wonder Tywin had wanted to drive Brienne from Jaime's life; with her, he was winning and ruining his father's plans. And she'd said herself: if Jaime had known Tywin was forcing them apart, he wasn't sure what he would have done. He could have tried to find another team, bringing his number one position in the World Championship with him as leverage. Nightfort would have happily picked him up. Then Tywin would have lost his bet and his best driver. So his father had played on Brienne's sense of honor and ruthlessly cut them apart, gambling on Jaime failing, and when Jaime had the audacity to not even do that, his father had apparently decided to _make_ him fail. 

He wondered if Tywin would have been more or less upset if Jaime had been killed in the crash, instead of just maimed. Probably less; he certainly had insurance he could have collected if Jaime had died. 

Jaime sat down on the toilet seat and put his head in his hand and wondered when his father had started hating him so completely. Had it truly been when Jaime had gone to Aerys' team? Or had it been before that, when their mother had died and Tywin had started hating everyone, his children most of all. He blamed Tyrion for Joanna's death, but he blamed Jaime and Cersei for her continued presence in his life. Tywin would sometimes stare at the twins and bemoan how much they looked like their mother, especially Jaime. “You have her smile,” Tywin accused him once, his tone suggesting Jaime had stolen it from their dead mother's body. Jaime had not smiled around his father much after that. Since Aerys he hadn't smiled much at all, until this year. Now his father had come to steal it back, and no matter how tired Jaime was he would not let him. 

Jaime wrapped a thick towel around his waist and peeked out the door to find Brienne was awake and blinking at him, though she was still fully clothed. He couldn't miss the way her gaze traveled down his chest, lingering where he held the towel closed with his good hand, or the blush staining her cheeks and neck red as she did. 

“Shower's all yours,” he said, hurrying to his closet. By the time he'd dressed, he could hear the water running and he escaped to the kitchen before he let his baser instincts convince him to hang around and wait for her to finish. 

At ten AM, clean and fed and strictly not talking about anything important, they headed downstairs to find Sandor waiting for them as promised. The Hound gave Brienne a look that Jaime could not decipher and she shook her head a little as though saying “not now.” Sandor glared at Jaime. 

“What?” Jaime asked, confused. “What did I do?”

Sandor just grunted and got in the car. 

“What's his problem?” Jaime asked Brienne after they'd climbed in the backseat. He knew Sandor could hear, but the man reacted to all backseat conversations as though there were an invisible wall between them, one of many reasons Jaime had hired him. 

She shot Jaime a guilty glance. “He knows about us,” she said quietly. 

“What, that we were-”

“Yes,” she said hurriedly. “And that Tywin made me end it.” 

“Then why is he glaring at _me_?”

“I...didn't take it well when it first happened. I think because he only saw my response he blames you.” 

Jaime looked upfront and caught Sandor watching them in the rearview mirror. “Typical. Everybody takes your side over mine,” he said, only half-joking. Brienne just pressed her hand briefly to his knee and let it drop. 

Sandor dropped them off in front of the IAF offices and opened the passenger side window to tell them he'd wait for them in the parking structure. “I don't know what you're doing,” he added, “but you look freaked the fuck out.”

“We are,” Brienne admitted. 

“If you need anything, just holler.” 

She smiled and they watched Sandor drive away. “We should tell him,” Jaime said, and Brienne nodded. 

“After this, it will be the first thing we do. Look, there's Peck and Pia, let's go.” 

They hadn't made an appointment with Baelish, but Jaime hadn't grown up at the foot of Tywin Lannister without learning how to breeze through receptionists and personal assistants with ease, and they soon found themselves seated at Petyr's oversized desk while Peck and Pia hovered behind them. Baelish's office wasn't as large as his father's, but he'd stuffed it with years of pictures and racing memorabilia. 

“Jaime Lannister,” the weasel-faced man said with an insincere smile. “It's been a long time since you've been in these offices. What brings you here in such an uproar to see me today?”

“Have you done a review of my crash at Harrenhal?” Jaime asked as they'd planned. They wanted to give Petyr a chance to provide any additional information first before they shared all of theirs with him.

“Of course we have, it's standard procedure. How are you doing, anyway? Shouldn't you consider getting a prosthetic?” 

“I'm not here to talk about my hand,” Jaime said grimly. “Not directly at least. Did you find anything unusual about the crash?”

Petyr sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, but there was a flicker of concern in his calculating, gray-green eyes. “Just that it was an unpreventable tragedy,” he said. 

Jaime gestured for Peck to set down the folder of images and information he'd printed out from the USB stick. “Then you're in luck, because our mutual friend Josmyn here has done an extensive review, and we think you'll be interested in the results.” 

Petyr glanced at the folder and shrugged. “I suppose I can find some time to look at it. Is that all?”

“You'll look at it now,” Jaime said. 

“I'm afraid I really don't have the time to spare right this minute, Lannister.”

“Make time,” Jaime said softly. “Unless you want to wait to read it when we publish this online.” 

Baelish's smile slipped and he pulled the folder towards himself, opening it and taking out the first document. Jaime could see the moment he got to the first of the revelations, because his fingers tightened on the paper and he looked up at them. “You can't be serious with these allegations.” 

“We're deadly serious. Keep reading.” 

He did, his fake tan not able to hide the blood draining from his face. Finally he looked up and he folded his hands in his lap, but not before Jaime saw they were trembling. 

“If this is true-”

“It is true, every word of it.” 

“_If_ it is,” Petyr insisted, “this could ruin Formula 1.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Petyr said intently. “And neither will you, if you know what's good for you.” 

Jaime heard the echo of his father telling him the same about what had happened with Aerys, and a surge of old fury bolted through him. “We're going to tell every last person in the world, so you better come up with a plan to handle it.” 

Petyr leaned forward, slamming his hands on the table. Behind them, Pia jumped. “If you let one word of this out, we will sue you into the ground for defamation.” 

“It can't be defamation if it's the truth.” 

“I swear to all the gods, Jaime, you cannot tell anyone about this. Let us handle it internally. _Quietly_.” 

“Will anyone go to jail for attempted murder?”

“Attempted-” Petyr scoffed. “There's no way Hoat could have known that would happen. They were probably just trying to slow you down at most.” 

Jaime stood, the others rising with him. “We're done here.” 

“Wait,” Petyr said, standing too. He was breathing hard, his eyes darting over all of them. “We'll sort out some kind of response but I want you to sign something saying you won't publish anything.” 

“Absolutely not,” Brienne said, more fierce than Jaime had ever heard her, and he felt stronger having her fighting at his side. “This is more than a tragedy, Mr. Baelish, this is a dishonor to the entire sport. You must take immediate, proactive action to show that F1 is better than this.”

“Brienne Tarth,” Petyr sneered, and Jaime swallowed down the urge to put his fist in the man's face. “You think just because you're some feminist hero that you have any power here? I'm sorry to disillusion you, sweetheart, but you have nothing. Including a job in F1 next season.” 

Jaime worried for a moment that it was going to be Brienne who punched Petyr first, and he touched his fingers lightly to her arm when she tensed and leaned forward. 

“She can still work for Griffin,” Jaime said, and Petyr shook his head. 

“Not if she continues with this folly. We will address the issue, but it will be done on our terms, in our way. That's the only deal I'm willing to make.” 

Jaime shrugged. “Then I guess we'll have to see what the media says about that on tomorrow's news sites. Come on,” he told the others, ushering them out ahead of him. They ignored Petyr yelling their names, that he would bring all of them down if they persisted. When the elevator doors closed and silence descended as they did, the four of them looked at each other. Brienne still looked furious, and Jaime was glad to see Peck and Pia were more determined than scared. 

“Plan B?” Peck asked. 

Jaime exchanged a quick, considering look with Brienne, and then he nodded at Peck. “Plan B.”

* * *

They enacted Plan B the next morning in Jaime's apartment, Jaime pacing around the living room, Brienne and Pia on the couch, Sandor slouched in the recliner looking his usual amount of annoyed. Peck sat at the dining room table with his laptop open. 

“You're sure about this?” he asked for the third time and Jaime glared at him. 

“Yes. Publish the damned post.” 

There was the soft clicking of keys and then Peck's voice loud in counterpoint: “All done.” 

Plan B was a blog post on Peck's Formula 1 news site providing a highly redacted version of what they had given Petyr; just enough information to cause a stir and prove it was real, but not so much they couldn't leverage Petyr to act. It was focused almost exclusively on the illegal gambling ring, skirting mostly around the issue of Jaime's crash. They'd spent all of yesterday afternoon preparing it and giving Baelish a chance to change his mind. 

“Now what?” Brienne asked. She felt like there should have been more weight to doing something so momentous. 

“Now we wait to see who picks up the story first.”

“I can reach out to Melisandre,” she offered, and Jaime frowned but he looked at Peck for his input. 

“Let's give it time to seed naturally over social media. If we go too all-in with the big networks right away that might make it easier for IAF to stomp the post down before it can spread. If the fans get it first, they'll save copies and publish their own takes and the dissemination over the internet will keep the information more free.” 

“It's too bad Argella isn't here,” Brienne murmured, “she'd love this.” 

Jaime snorted, but then he faced her. “You should send her the link. I bet she's got a huge network she could send it to.”

Brienne nodded, grateful to be able to actually do something instead of just sit and be supportive. Tywin Lannister had been closing walls around her on every side for weeks; it was time for her to bust out and do some wall-building of her own. 

“You should tell the rest of your crew,” Sandor said, his voice a deep grumble. “They'll be pissed as hell, but better that they hear it from you.” 

“I'll call Bronn first,” Jaime said, grabbing his phone and heading for the bedroom as he dialed. She heard him say, “Nothing's wrong. Well, that's not entirely true,” just before he shut the door. 

It took a little under an hour before the first media call came in on Jaime's cell. He stared down at it and then looked at Brienne. “It's Melisandre,” he said and she took a breath. “Here we go.”

Five minutes later, an unknown number called Brienne. “Hello?” she said. 

“Brienne Tarth?”

“Yes.” 

“This is Myles Manwoody with local channel Sunspear 10?” 

“Yes?” 

“I have the most shocking blog post in front of me and I was hoping I could talk to you about it.” 

She did, giving him quotes they'd all gone over earlier under Jaime's deft direction, making it clear all they were expecting was action by IAF to address their concerns.

Sandor was chewing on his fingernails and he spit something out to the side. “Anybody made plans to grab Hoat before he runs to ground?” 

“Shit,” Jaime said and Brienne groaned. In their focus on Tywin and Martyn, Hoat had slipped their minds entirely. None of the three men had been named or the extent of their role in the gambling ring referenced, but if they were even halfway paying attention they'd be worried about how much Jaime and Brienne knew, and Hoat they had the least knowledge of. 

With a sigh, Sandor levered himself up out of the chair. “I'm on it,” he groused. 

“What are you going to do?” Brienne asked. 

“Make sure he doesn't try to escape,” he said with a grin that was in no way reassuring. 

Half an hour later, her dad called. “Honey?” he said as soon as she answered. 

“Hi, Dad.” 

“Argella just sent me the most upsetting link, have you seen this?” 

She exchanged a quick look with Jaime and then took her turn in his bedroom. “I helped write it.” 

“Is it true?”

“It is.” 

Her dad exhaled loud into the phone. “Well.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Leave it to you to root out corruption in IAF in your first season.”

Brienne snorted. “I didn't do it on purpose.” 

“Seems like it has a lot to do with Lannister Corp. How's Jaime taking it?”

She smiled softly at the bed, pleased that that had been her dad's first concern. “He's upset, obviously. But dealing with it has given him action to focus on in a way losing his hand didn't, so he's coping well so far.” 

“How are you taking it?”

“It's...a lot to absorb. We only found out yesterday ourselves.” 

“What's your plan?”

“We wait for IAF to contact us to figure out how to move forward. As we hinted at in the blog post, we went to Petyr Baelish and he didn't want to address it publicly at all, but this is too big to hide in the shadows. So we're trying to force his hand.” 

“Have you heard from anyone from Lannister Corp?” 

“Not yet, but I imagine we will soon.” 

“Be careful when they call. You should have a lawyer on the line with you. Do you have a lawyer?” 

“Jaime wants to ask his brother.” 

“That might be a conflict of interest. I'll have Goodwin give you a call, you should use him as much as you need, I'll cover any costs.” 

“Dad, you don't have to.”

“I know. But I'm doing it anyway. I'll call him now. Take care of yourself, darling. I love you.” 

“I love you too.” She hung up and sat down on Jaime's bed, covering her face for a moment and exhaling slowly. Brienne felt heavy with regrets: that Jaime hadn't been able to savor Robb's post-race speech, that she hadn't done something when she'd seen the three men in Harrenhal, that she couldn't get over her fear of being bullied and harassed enough to let Jaime love her out loud. Brienne had lived her life swimming upstream through unkindness; it had been nice to flow downstream even for a few months, but now the river stood between her and the man she loved. 

There was a soft knock and Brienne stood. “Just a second.” 

“Petyr Baelish called Jaime,” Pia said through the door. “They're on the phone now.” 

Brienne hurried out of the bedroom after Pia just as Jaime was saying “-put you on speaker” and then setting his phone down on the dining room table. 

“Who else is with you?” Petyr asked, his voice loud in the quiet room. 

“Just those of us who were at the office yesterday.” 

“What do you want?” 

“We told you: we want you to deal with all of this publicly. I want Hoat and Ramsay and Martyn thrown in jail, I want my father in jail, too, but I'll take him being forced to declare bankruptcy in the meantime.”

“You don't know that Tywin was involved with any of it.” 

“Please,” Jaime scoffed, “huge sums of money weren't transferred from Lannister Corp accounts without Tywin Lannister knowing about it.” 

“We can report Hoat based on the video footage, but his motives will get out when he goes to trial.” 

“It stains the entire sport, Baelish. How could you just ignore that?” 

“We won't ignore it,” Petyr snapped. “We'd just deal with it without telling everyone in the world.” 

“You can't keep secrets like this,” Jaime insisted. 

“So we just tell the fans this has been happening, make some apologies, and be done?”

Jaime ran his hand through his hair, an act he'd done so many times that day that it had poofed up on the left side. “You put a stop to it. You change rules if you need to. You make amends showing the fans you've got the best interests of Formula 1 at heart.” 

“How do we do that?”

Brienne tilted her head curiously. She'd wondered that herself as they'd talked about what to do; none of them could circle around a single answer that would solve it all. 

“You punish Lannister Corp,” Jaime said tightly. 

“You really hate him that much,” Petyr murmured. 

“_Yes_,” Jaime hissed, and then he inhaled sharply through his nose. “But more than that, showing that they can't get away with it would make the fans feel better about your power over the league, and would show the other owners that no one is above what's good for the sport.” 

Petyr was quiet so long that Brienne peered down at the phone to make sure the line hadn't gone dead. When she glanced up at Jaime, he shrugged a little. 

“We could cut Lannister Corp's LST bonus,” Petyr said slowly. “That would be a huge drop in revenue for them.”

“That's a start.” 

“You have to prevent them from running a second driver next season,” Brienne jumped in and Jaime nodded in agreement. 

“Why?” Petyr asked, the disdain back in his voice just for her. 

“Because it's their fault Jaime was out early. They have to suffer the consequence of that, too.” 

Jaime brushed his fingers briefly over the top of her hand while Petyr said, “We'll take that under consideration. Any other requests?” 

“You need to update your image. Show the fans that this isn't the F1 it used to be,” Jaime said, staring at Brienne. “It's not some old boys' club for the rich where anyone different can't get a chance to succeed.” 

“Shall we pull in some hobos off the streets to drive?” Petyr snarked. Brienne grimaced; she remembered Jaime warning her back in April that now that she was in it she would know all the dirty laundry of the sport, and Petyr Baelish was soiled. 

“You need a woman driver,” Jaime said, still staring very intently at her, and Brienne's eyes widened in shock. 

“That's absurd,” Petyr said. 

“I've seen firsthand all season what a difference having a woman at a high level can make. A driver would be a huge step.” 

“Women have entered Grands Prix before.” 

“_Five_ women,” Pia jumped in, offended, “in the entire fifty plus years of the sport, and only two even made it past qualifying. It's been twenty-five years since the last woman entered a Grand Prix, and never as a serious contender.”

Petyr was quiet again and Brienne could imagine him grinding his teeth in annoyance. _Good_, she thought. 

“We will take that under consideration as well. I'll meet with the other IAF members and we'll get back to you soon.” 

“Today,” Jaime said. “If you don't, we publish more details tomorrow.” 

Brienne heard Petyr bite back a curse. “Fine. Today.” Then he did hang up, the line going dead, the four of them staring at the phone.

Pia spoke up first, asking “What's the LST?”

“The Longest Standing Team bonus,” Jaime said bitterly. “Lannister Corp gets money for being the only team that's been around since the beginning. One hundred million dragons a year just for showing up.” 

Pia's nose wrinkled in disapproval. “That's stupid.” 

“That's the sport. And my father's power.”

“What will he do if Petyr does cut them off from it?” Brienne asked. 

“There's no telling. I'm sure he has some blackmail on Baelish as well, the man stinks of ill-gotten gains. Things could get very ugly, very fast.” 

“Are we doing the right thing?” Peck asked, his eyes wide. “Are we really going to ruin the whole sport?”

“We won't ruin the sport, but even if we did, what's the alternative?” Brienne asked. “We let Hoat get away with causing Jaime's crash? We let Martyn and Tywin off the hook for manipulating the system just to make money? The sport will recover from having a light shined on its dark parts, as long as the work is done to make it right. It will only decay faster if we let the darkness stay.” 

“Should have let you talk to Baelish,” Jaime murmured, his eyes warm and appreciative. 

“I'm not good on the spot, you know that,” she said, blushing. 

Peck and Pia exchanged a look that made Brienne nervous; a knowing, suggestive glance that said that she and Jaime were going to have to spend less time together around others if they didn't want to invite the gossip themselves. 

Jaime's phone rang again, but he didn't answer it, instead staring at it like it was a live bomb. Brienne looked at the screen and saw Tywin's name and she felt suddenly sick. They let it go to voicemail, and thirty seconds later it rang again. 

“Are you going to talk to him?” she asked. 

“I don't think I should right now.” 

The ringing stopped. 

“My dad said we should have a lawyer on the line when we do. He offered our family lawyer, Goodwin.”

“Your dad is a smart man.” 

The phone rang again and still they all just stared without touching. 

“What do you think he wants?” Peck asked. Tywin hung up again. 

“Nothing we'll be willing to give,” Jaime said quietly. 

Jaime had the beaten down look of a man who had been on the receiving end of the demands Tywin would make too many times in his life before, and was too weary to hear another one, too soul-sick to fight back. Her dread twisted into a hot, burning volcano inside her. Tywin Lannister was a monster, had been one, from everything Jaime had said, his entire life. He had crushed and devoured everyone in his path, even his own family, his own _children_, and now he had turned his monstrous energy on her. She was sick of recoiling from him in fear, denying herself everything she wanted because Tywin might ruin it. Someone needed to stand against him, to not let Jaime carry this fight on his own. Brienne had her father and her small home and life back on Tarth, too far and insignificant even for Tywin's reaching claws, as a shield. She had her fury as a sword. If not her, then who? She wouldn't regret her inaction again. “If he calls back, I'm talking to him,” Brienne said.

“What happened to needing a lawyer on the line? Being cautious?” 

“Fuck caution.”

Jaime jerked his head back, his brow knitting. “Fuck caution?”

“Yes,” she said, and she took his hand. “This isn't the time for it, there's too much at stake and Tywin can't get away with what he's done.” Jaime's fingers gripped hers tightly and he took a breath that made his whole body expand. He would wait for her as long as she needed, she believed that down to her bones. Jaime would wait and he would want and so would she, and it all seemed so stupid now, keeping herself from him and the feelings neither of them could stop from bubbling over, like a pot on constant simmer, no matter how hard they tried. It was like trying to stop a race car with your hands. She was still afraid, but she could still be afraid and have him at her side. 

Brienne wrapped her free hand in the neck of his t-shirt and pulled him closer, kissing him hard. Pia squeaked off to the side but Brienne didn't care, she just wanted this: the slant of Jaime's surprised mouth over hers melting swiftly into a devouring heat, his right arm snaking around her waist to pull her flush against him. They had kissed so many times in their few weeks together; soft kisses and hungry ones, teasing kisses and a collision of mouths that burned them both down. But she had never felt so wanted, so welcomed, so grateful to have her lips on his, his tongue swiping low across hers, imagining the feel of it much lower on her body.

“Oh for fuck's sake,” Sandor said unexpectedly, startling them apart. Jaime's chest was heaving and so was Brienne's and she still wanted more. She wanted all of him. 

Jaime licked his reddened lips. “When did you get back?” he asked, still staring at Brienne. 

“Just now. Should've taken longer,” Sandor grumbled. 

“_Yes_,” Jaime agreed vehemently. 

Brienne laughed a little, drunk on the taste of Jaime's mouth. She looked around and Peck was studiously staring down at his laptop, red to the tip of his ears, while Pia was gazing starry-eyed at them both. Sandor looked, somehow, more annoyed than usual, a feat Brienne hadn't been sure he was capable of. 

Jaime's phone rang again and when Brienne went to answer it she stilled, seeing Tyrion's name. “This one's for you,” she said, holding Jaime's phone out to him. He took it, his fingertips brushing hers, and she shivered a little. 

“If father is there I'm hanging up,” he said in greeting. He turned up the volume on his phone a little and held it out from his ear, gesturing her closer. 

“-me, you idiot,” Brienne heard when she leaned in. 

“What do you want?” 

“I want to know what's going on. Father is _furious_.” 

“Read any interesting blog posts lately?” 

Tyrion was quiet for a moment. “Jaime, do you know what you've done?” he asked, and even with the distance Brienne could hear the worry thick in Tyrion's tone. 

“It sounds like you do,” Jaime said, his voice tight with barely controlled fury. 

There was silence from Tyrion's line before he finally said, “I think we should talk in person.” 

“I think we should talk now. Did you know?” Jaime asked and Brienne prayed to every god that was or ever would be that Tyrion hadn't; she wasn't sure Jaime could take one more betrayal. 

“No,” Tyrion said immediately. “Not about the gambling, or anything else. But the company...” He was agonizingly quiet again. 

“Where are you? Are you at the offices?”

“No, I'm working from home today. I just haven't said it out loud before. It feels disloyal.”

“I didn't know you were still loyal to our father.”

“I'm not. I'm just loyal to the fantasy that we're not all screwed. Lannister Corp is broke, Jaime. It has been for months.”

“How is that possible?” 

“It turns out you get your risk-taking from father's side of the family tree, and Cersei inherited his taste for extravagance. Combined they make for poor bedfellows, especially when the sheets are short, or in this case ripped to shreds, if you'll pardon my excruciating metaphor.” 

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“I didn't know for sure until White Harbor.” 

“That's why you were really there,” Jaime said, sounding disappointed. 

“I did want to see you, too. But I came down to confront father away from the offices. I thought he'd be more open to discussing it. He was not, as you can imagine.”

“You could have told me.” 

Tyrion sighed into the phone, the line crackling again. “I could have but you were having an incredible season and I saw no reason to mess it up. He said he had it all under control, and even though every statement I saw suggested otherwise, appearances agreed with him.”

“You believed him?”

“For my own sanity, I had to. Ironic, I suppose, that I sided with appearances over reality. But gambling on the sport? I knew he'd be desperate to save the company but I never could have guessed that. What are you going to do next?”

“We're still working that out.” 

“I feel like I should be making disaster preparedness plans.” 

Jaime smiled a little, and this close Brienne could see the tension in it. “That might not be a bad idea. If you have any critical funds that father can control, now would be the time to secure them. I separated all my accounts from him years ago, but I know you haven't been as lucky.” 

“Not lucky, but well-prepared for the day he'd get sick enough of me that he'd finally cut me off. You don't have to worry about me. You might want to tell our sister, though.” 

“The less she knows right now the better. She's got distance and protection being a Baratheon, at least. I don't want to drag her in unless we have to.” 

“Should have let me change my name to Flash Speedster and join the circus like I wanted to when I was six.”

Jaime snorted, bitter and amused. “Never too late to live your dreams, Flash.”

Brienne heard Tyrion's soft chuckle, so faint she could have easily imagined it. “If you need some of my proof, I have it stored away in a safe deposit box. I can give that to you if it would help.” 

“It might. I'll let you know.” 

“Take care of yourself, Jaime. The last two months have been...dramatic for you.” 

“I will. You, too, little brother. I love you,” Jaime said gruffly. 

There was no response for a few seconds and then Tyrion said in an emotional voice, “Now I'm really worried. Be careful, Jaime.” They hung up and Jaime sighed. 

“What do we do now?” Peck asked. 

“Now we wait for Baelish to call back.” Jaime wound his right arm around Brienne's waist and laid his head on her broad shoulder as easy as if they'd been doing it for months, as though this one movement wasn't as momentous in its simplicity as summiting a mountain. With everyone else's eyes on them, Brienne put her arm around Jaime's back in return and held him close, reveling in the ability to do so. He was warm and solid and she pressed her nose into his hair to breathe in his familiar smell. Her whole body relaxed at the soap and shampoo scent of him, the way his curling hair tickled her chin. It felt like she'd been lost in the dark and now the light had come back to her life.

Sandor rolled his eyes and went to the refrigerator where he pulled out a beer, then opened Jaime's pantry and started rifling around before yanking out a giant bag of potato chips. He took his snacks back to the easy chair and settled in with a loud grunt, then glared at all of them. 

“What? I'm just getting comfortable.” 

There was a knock at the door and Jaime didn't even lift his head. “That's probably a reporter. No offense, Peck, but you all are aggravatingly relentless.” 

“It got us here, didn't it?” he chirped, apparently unbothered. 

“Hey! Lannister!” Bronn shouted from outside. “I know you're in there!”

Brienne smiled. “I'll get it.” She kissed the top of Jaime's head, as natural and sustaining as rain to a flower, and then extricated herself from his grasp. 

When she opened the front door, Bronn stood there with several huge pizza boxes in his arms, Podrick next to him loaded down with multiple bags of clanking beer bottles and a worried look on his face. 

“The cavalry have arrived,” Bronn said with a determined nod.

* * *

They ate pizza and drank beer and caught Bronn and Podrick fully up to speed and by the time Pod was sitting shocked and owl-eyed on the couch, his pizza forgotten in his lap, Baelish called back. Jaime and Brienne's phones hadn't stopped ringing in the interim, but they had stopped answering them. This call Jaime took, putting it on speaker immediately. 

“That was fast,” Jaime said. 

“You were very clear in your timeline, Lannister.” Petyr was on speakerphone as well and Brienne wondered who else was in the room with him.

“And in my demands. So what will you do?”

“The IAF Board of Directors,” Petyr clearly enunciated, and Brienne knew he was absolving himself of personal responsibility by making it a decision of the board and not the president, “has decided to take the following actions in regards to your report: in the clearest matter with the most evidence, Vargo Hoat will be fired and reported to the police for his actions sabotaging your vehicle. Should he go to court, the IAF will be willing to accept a lesser jail time for his uncontested guilty plea.” Jaime glowered at the phone as Petyr pressed on. “In the matter of Martyn Lannister, he will be banned from working for any Formula 1 teams in the future but will be allowed to remain a free man with his uncontested agreement to not speak of the matter further. IAF will withhold Lannister Corp's LST payment and limit them to a single driver for next season, but no other punitive actions will be taken with their uncontested agreement to the same. Everyone with full knowledge of the contents referenced in the blog post on Formula 1 News page will sign a legally binding agreement to not discuss the matter in any detail in perpetuity. If you do not sign this agreement, punitive action will be taken. Finally, we have considered your idea of a female driver and would like to offer Brienne Tarth the role of safety car driver for the coming season. ” 

Jaime was coiled and trembling with rage and Brienne couldn't blame him. The IAF had decided to take the path of hiding as much as they could, buying people's silence with half-punishments that would keep everything in a delicate balance no one would be eager to break, and the world would never have to know the extent to which the corruption extended. She wondered if even the rest of the owners would know. And for she and Jaime and the others, only a threat and an offer that was so condescending she could barely swallow it. 

“Tell him your thing about shining a light on the darkness,” Peck whispered, but Jaime cut them both off. 

“We'll take your terms under consideration and get back to you,” Jaime said sharply, before hanging up without waiting for Petyr's agreement. 

“Fuck 'em,” Sandor said from the chair around a mouthful of food. He'd eaten almost an entire pizza on his own. 

“I agree with the Hound,” Bronn said. 

“So do I,” Jaime agreed, “but what's our next move then?”

“What happens if we post everything?” Brienne asked. “What are we trying to accomplish?”

“We're trying to make sure these criminals get what's coming to them,” Jaime said darkly. 

“We need the IAF to do that. We can't take on Lannister Corp on our own, no matter how much evidence we think we have. If we reject all of Petyr's demands and strike out on our own, he'll do anything to protect the money they're all making. I'm not entirely naive,” she said to Bronn's startled face. “The IAF won't do everything we want, but we can't do it by ourselves either.” 

“So we don't even try? We take their shit offer?” Jaime asked, disbelieving. 

“No. We negotiate and we use what they will give us to leverage more. We have Tyrion's proof about the company being in debt. Peck, have you been able to find out more about that, too?” 

“Not much. I don't have a lot of banking friends to confirm it, but I've heard enough things in the executive offices, and in the garages. Selling art pieces to the highest bidders, not bringing in a second driver for the last races of the season, even engineers complaining they've been told from higher-up not to make adjustments to Lannister cars but not being given a reason why.” Brienne frowned; she'd heard rumbles of that but had always been too busy focusing on what they would change to pay much attention to what they couldn't. “Since we know the money Martyn bet with came from the corporation, we have to assume all these things aren't just coincidence, especially if you say Mr. Lannister has proof. There's no reason for them to take that kind of a chance otherwise, is there?” 

Jaime shook his head. “There isn't. My father doesn't take risks just to take them, but he will if the Lannister name is in danger. He'd do anything to protect the company's image. Legacy before everything, even family.”

“Losing the LST will likely be a huge blow,” Brienne said. “If they don't do well in the Constructor's Championship next season, they'll lose even more.”

“And if they have one driver, they're sure to do badly,” Jaime said slowly, pulling out onto the track her thoughts were taking. “Only the top four teams get a bonus for the Constructor's Championship. Direwolf and Sunspear are certain to take the top two, and Stag Motors will likely be in third, especially if Lannister Racing only runs one driver.” He pursed his lips, but there was some other idea bubbling in his eyes, a bright, glowing spark that flared when he looked up at Brienne. “So we need someone to take that fourth spot. Keep Lannister Corp out of the running entirely. With no money from the LST or the championship, if we can use Hoat's shadow to drive some sponsors away, Lannister Corp will be forced to declare bankruptcy. We beat them using the only thing they can't deny: the races themselves.” 

Brienne nodded. “Who do you think is most likely to do it? Golden Company? Griffin?” she offered, even the taste of it bitter on her tongue. 

“You,” Jaime said. 

“Me what?”

“You can beat them.” Brienne leaned back into the couch and Jaime shifted towards her, holding his hand and his stump out like he was trying to soothe a nervous animal. “Before you say something foolish like no, just listen to me. If we agree to most of Petyr's terms, then Lannister Corp only runs Lancel. I've driven with the man long enough to know he's good, but he's not better than you. That also leaves a twentieth driver spot open on the field. As a gesture of goodwill, we convince Petyr to give the LST money to whatever constructor we set up for you to run under. You have a car already, we use the money and the offseason to bring it up to speed while I get you trained. You bring us the fourth place constructor position.”

“That's crazy,” Brienne said hoarsely. “I haven't even driven in F3.”

“You've done test driving. You ran plenty of free practices for me.”

Nerves and every reason she would fail coiled tightly in her chest. “That's not the same. There are F2 drivers we could pull in, I'd be jumping the line.” 

“Fuck the line. Are any of those F2 drivers women? Any in F3?” Her mouth was too dry to speak so she just shook her head. “You could give girls something to really cheer about instead of a fucking safety driver. You don't think Lyanna Mormont wouldn't yell louder for you than anyone? You don't think you've earned it just from what you've done for me this season?” Brienne's eyes darted to take in the others, and while Peck looked startled, none of them looked disapproving, or like she was mad to even think about it. Pia was positively glowing with excitement. “Brienne,” Jaime said softly, and she yanked her attention back to him, let his gentle, hopeful stare catch her. “If your father had let you keep racing, I know you would have made it all the way to F2, and the bullshit power structure would have stopped you there. You're not jumping the line, you're taking your rightful place in it.” 

The idea burrowed inside her, a reckless and idealistic firework lit and waiting to go off. An idea worthy of Jaime, perhaps, but not her. Not responsible, down-to-earth Brienne Tarth.

“My father will never let me do this.”

“It's not really his decision. It's entirely yours. You can take the safety car if you want, or nothing at all, and we'll figure out another way, but it's _right there_ waiting for you. Take this and shove it down their throats, Brienne: Martyn and Ramsay and Connington and every last one of them. You can keep them from getting away with playing their game by beating them in the place they feel invincible. You were a wrench in my life,” he said, giving her a quick, fierce smile, “now you can do it for the entire sport.” 

“But...how...” she gestured helplessly. She didn't even know what she was asking, but Jaime did. 

“You've got a great tactical mind and natural instincts and a car. We can get sponsors and a crew. And you have me, and I have money.” 

“I can't let you spend all your money on this.”

“The LST will cover a huge chunk of it. It's more than some teams get in a year.” He leaned enough towards her that their knees were touching, and he rested his hand across both, a bridge between them. She stilled a little at his touch, took a breath. “It's your decision, Brienne. If you don't want it, then we take the deal as is and be grateful something came out of this mess. But every person in this room would stand behind you if you wanted more.” 

“This is insanity,” she whispered. 

“Which means it's just my speed.” His grin was a reckless, curving road, a place to get lost, to find something new she had never even dreamed. “And yours, too.” His voice dropped. “I've seen you take on a storm, Brienne. You handled me, even at my worst. You can do this.” 

“I need a minute,” she said. “Just, can I have a minute?”

Jaime pulled back, nodding. “Have as many minutes as you need.” 

Brienne excused herself from the room, stepping out onto the small but secluded balcony and pulling the sliding glass door shut behind her, cutting off the faint murmurs of the others as they talked fallback plans. They were a resourceful group; if she didn't want to do it, she knew they would try to find another way, that Jaime wouldn't blame her if all they got out of this was Hoat in jail and the gambling ring quietly shut down. 

She would blame herself, of course, but Brienne was no stranger to carrying grief and regret. 

The sun was already hovering low and pale on the horizon to her right, long summer days a victim of the oncoming winter. Brienne hugged her arms around herself against the chill wind and considered her future, and her past. 

When she was young, a couple years after her mother had died, she and Galladon had ridden their bikes down to the southern coast of Tarth. The summer sky had been the kind of deep blue poets used to describe the feeling of freedom, the road under their wheels shimmering in the heat. 

“Where are we going?” Brienne had yelled to her brother racing ahead of her. 

“It's a surprise!” his words had floated back. 

“Just tell me, I hate surprises!” she'd shouted into the wind. Galladon had thrown his head back with laughter and pushed them on. 

He led them to a cliff edge and then hopped off his bike, motioning for her to do the same. “We walk from here,” he'd said, starting down a small crevice carved into the side of the cliff. 

“Are you sure about this?”

“Trust me, B, I've done it before.” 

She had scrambled after him, even though she was scared, partly because she trusted him and partly because her heart had been singing in excitement at the feel of the pebbles slipping under her feet on the path, her fingers gripped hard into the rock, the water sparkling blue below. 

He'd finally stopped about a third of the way down where the path ended in a small plateau. Galladon had strode to the edge, his toes right at the tip, and peered down. Brienne, breathing hard from fear and adrenaline, scooted close but not as close to the drop off. 

“What are we doing?” she'd whispered. 

“We're jumping off.” 

“Gal!” she'd gasped, terrified and thrilled. “We'll die!”

“No we won't,” he'd said, and he'd smiled down at her – not too far down, she'd already started sprouting in height and he was tall, too, but not nearly his full height yet either – and she'd believed in that moment he was invincible, that she was, too, because she was with him. “Will you jump, B?” he'd asked, holding out his hand. 

Sometimes she loved her brother and sometimes, like when he ruffled her hair or stole the last dessert or called her knobby-kneed, she hated him, but what never changed was her trust in him. So she'd nodded and they'd taken off their shoes and she'd peered over the edge one more time, her toes pale against the dark, nearly too hot rock. 

“How do we get back up?” she'd asked, needing to fully understand the plan as always. 

“There's a hidden beach we can swim to that will get us to the road.”

“What if we hit the rocks on the way down?”

“We won't hit the rocks. You can do this, I know you can.” 

She'd joined him with their backs pressed to the cliff face behind them, solid and real, and stared out at the line where the sky met the sea. If she ran hard enough, jumped as far as her already long legs would take her, maybe she could touch it, lifted up by her brother's belief in her. Brienne had felt the fear drop away and she'd grinned at Galladon. “Last one to the beach is a rotten fish!” she'd called and then run, jumping off with her brother's delighted laughter falling after. 

On the balcony, Brienne turned her face to the wind and felt the stirring of the same fearlessness and elation as that moment when her feet had left the ground that bright summer day. Galladon would have been the first to tell her she could do this, too. This scary, dangerous, wonderful thing that she'd stopped letting herself dream about years ago, just like she'd stopped letting herself believe a man would ever truly love her. Both of those waited for her in Jaime's living room, if she were just brave enough to accept them. 

Brienne opened the door again and every head in the room turned her way. “Call Petyr back,” she said. “Tell him we have modifications to his terms.”

* * *

The machine moved quickly after they got off the phone, a text coming in an hour later from Tyrion that Hoat had been arrested and wondering what was going on. Jaime told Tyrion as much as he could. They had agreed to review the agreements Petyr sent over, and Brienne had forwarded them straight to Goodwin, who'd promised to get back to them tomorrow with his recommendation. Jaime didn't want to put the updated terms in danger before they'd even started, so he gave Tyrion information only about Hoat's sabotage, had listened to his brother curse imaginatively and loud for a solid minute before making him swear to let the system do its work. By the time they hung up, Bronn had pulled a bottle of champagne out of Jaime's wine cabinet and was popping the cork with practiced ease. While they drank the first bottle they read the statement put out by IAF that their investigation into Jaime's crash had shown malicious action, and Jaime and Brienne had both turned off their phones as soon as they'd lit up with new calls and texts. That was a problem for tomorrow, and the days after. 

It was dark and late by the time the others left, half of them drunk on the celebratory champagne. Jaime had bought it halfway through the season, telling himself it was for New Year's Eve, but in his heart he had wanted to drink it to celebrate the World Championship. Petyr's reluctant agreement to their terms, the idea of Brienne getting to prove herself in the field, were the best possible replacement Jaime could think of. 

After he closed the door on Sandor shouldering a sleepy-eyed Podrick, Jaime found Brienne sitting on his couch, her bare feet up on his coffee table, her head leaned back, throat exposed to the air. His heart did a slow roll in his chest seeing her settled so comfortably in his apartment, thinking of the way she'd kissed him earlier. That kiss had been a declaration, a claiming that he was eager to see to its completion, but they had to talk first. There would be no more regrets. 

Neither he nor Brienne had had much to drink; just enough on his end to make the stars sparkle a little more pleasantly, enough on hers to make her smile easy when he stood in front of the TV watching her. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his lips curving in response to hers. 

“Scared out of my mind,” she said, laughing softly. “Excited. A little like I might be dreaming.” 

“Do you want me to pinch you?” 

“No, but you could kiss me.” Her voice was husky and shy, and Jaime felt it shiver up his legs and thighs. 

He came around the coffee table and she set her feet on the floor, her legs spreading so he could stand between them. She was just at the height of his waist like this, slouching back against the couch cushion, her blue eyes deep and endless as the night. Brienne tentatively reached out and traced her fingers along the band of his pants and his belly jumped under the brush of her knuckles. She'd looked like the Warrior earlier that day, ready to face down even his father, but she'd been as trembling and nervous as the Maiden the week before, and he wasn't sure which was the truer of her feelings. 

“You know I want to kiss you,” he started and she groaned. 

“I don't think I want to hear the rest of that sentence.” 

“It's been an intense couple of days.”

“Yes.” She licked her lips and the need became a pull between them that was like swimming against a riptide. Her fingers unerringly unsnapped the top button of his pants. His cock was already hard against the fabric, but he grabbed her fingers before they could move lower, and, reluctantly, he sat down on the table's edge with his knees pressed against the couch. “I'm not drunk,” she insisted.

Gods how had he never been able to stop smoking, but he was able to resist kissing her thick, pouting lips now? 

_The things I'll do for love, apparently._

“Brienne, I want nothing more than to take you back to my bed and fuck you until you can't stand,” he murmured, gratified at how her mouth opened on a gasp, the color on her cheeks darkening. “But your life is about to change in ways you can't even imagine yet. I'll be with you no matter what we do here tonight, but...” he brought her hand up and kissed it tenderly. “The hardest part of what happened between us last time was that you regretted it. I can't do that to either of us again.” 

“I won't,” she said and he wanted to believe her, here with her pale hair spread on his dark couch, her lips red and willing, her legs pressed against his. 

This would surely kill him, but better death this way than by heartbreak. 

“When we do this, I want it to be both of us knowing everything that comes with it, and not caring. I want you to be more certain than you were on Tarth, because this time I'm not going to let you leave my bed after just a day.” He slid his hand up her thigh and she trembled at his touch, her big body going tense under his palm. Jaime knew being able to bring Brienne pleasure was as satisfying as driving his muscular car around a curve had been, and he allowed himself the briefest fantasy now of dropping to his knees on the floor, tugging her pants down and licking her until she was keening, but when he thought of tomorrow morning, of weeks from now when she would face the media as a new driver, he couldn't stop picturing her worried and wounded face when they attacked her because of him, of what she might do, how she might feel, in response. He pulled his hand safely back to his side. 

“I can be brave,” she said and he laughed a little in disbelief that she could believe he didn't think she was. 

“You already are. You waded into the Chief Mechanic job like even I couldn't stop you. You've faced down my father multiple times already, and you're about to take on a challenge that most men would run from. It's not your bravery I'm worried about, Brienne. It's your heart.” He stood and tugged her up with him. “It’s too precious to treat it recklessly. So you can stay but tonight I'm sleeping on the couch, because I've used up every last millimeter of restraint already.” He stepped back around the coffee table, putting much needed distance between them. 

Brienne chewed her bottom lip, worrying it as she considered him. “Jaime,” she whispered and it was almost enough to break his last crumbling brick of resistance. But then she looked down and away and it held. “Thank you.” 

He swallowed, swallowed again when words were still lodged in his throat. “This isn't the end of it,” he promised, and when she glanced at him, there was determination in the line of her brow, even as she tucked her hair nervously behind her ear. 

“Not even close,” she agreed, Maiden and Warrior both as she disappeared into his bedroom. He blew out a long, ragged breath and laid down on the couch. Jaime knew he had done the right thing, felt the certainty settle warm into his body, soothing his jangled and aching need. The hard thing, but the right one. Brienne would realize it too, if she didn't already. The next weeks and months would be a nonstop parade of interviews and work, just to get prepared for the season to come. They'd be spending at least as much time avoiding a frenzied media as they would responding to it. Brienne would have to be focused, and so would he if he was going to help her through it. They couldn't risk ripping apart the tender threads of their hearts because they couldn't wait a few more months. He was down a hand and much of his self-confidence and he would not add to the burden she would have to bear. There was too much at stake, the most important of which was Brienne herself. 

And someday...someday she would come to him and he'd never have to push her away again. When that day came, nothing – not his father, not the media, not even the Seven themselves – would keep them apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter might not have been posted at all without Brynn's usual amazing beta services but ALSO it-may-be-dull-but-i'm-determined's salvaging of my ragged self-esteem by reading it early and reassuring me that it was honestly all going to be okay. It takes a village, people. 
> 
> There have actually been a [handful of women drivers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_Formula_One_drivers) in F1. Of the women who've raced, they have earned exactly .5 point because the race was called before they were half done. 
> 
> Also the LST is a real thing that Ferrari gets every year because WHY NOT.


	23. December (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne had woken up the next morning to find Jaime already gone, off, he said in his note, to his scheduled therapy session in Harrenhal, and she had seen not enough of him since then. It was for the best, she supposed. Every time she did all she could focus on were the way his slim hips moved, the strong lines of his forearms, how sometimes he would catch her watching him and she could see him thinking, too, of what else they could be doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels excessive, but at some point the chapter count will go up a little again I'm just not sure how much. I've got the rest of the story all plotted out, just not sure how much each section is going to need (I hadn't initially intended to split December into two chapters, for instance – or even November or October or September into 3 parts). So when you see the numbers go up, that's why. There is an end, I know what it's going to generally take to get there, I'm just not sure how chapter breaks are going to go.

The ferry back to Tarth was already playing Crone's Day songs over the tinny speakers. It didn't surprise Brienne; people in the South waited eagerly for December 1 to break out their favorite tunes and decorations. She'd already heard “Lead the Little Children” three times on the trip from her hotel room to now. The North, who still believed in the Old Gods, celebrated the shortest day of the year as the Long Night and were more stoic in their celebrations, but the South wrung every last drop out of the celebration until Crone's Day when they feted the Crone and Her guiding light to get them through the longest night of the year. Though it had become heavily commercialized over much of southern Westeros, on Tarth it always took longer for the old ways to be modernized and most people's observance there tended to focus on the quieter parts of Crone's Day. Brienne was convinced complaining about the commercialization of the holiday was an islander's favorite part. Still, Brienne looked forward to the buildup and annual Crone's Day Feast with her father every year, though this year less than most. 

After she had gone alone to Jaime's room two weeks ago she'd been unable to sleep for thinking of him, of how easy it would be to go back out and lay her body on top of his on the couch. They both wanted it and he loved her – an idea that even now set her heart revving at high speed – but for once Jaime had been the patient, rational one and it had been Brienne who'd been taking the curves without care. She'd been so filled with the adrenaline of action, with relief, with the look on his face when she'd kissed him, that it had been remarkably easy to overlook all of the very good reasons they should still take their time. Because he'd been right: once word got out that she was to be the first woman F1 driver in twenty-five years, the media spotlight would be relentless and while Brienne wasn't ashamed of being seen with him, no longer had to worry whether other people could control her fate because of it, what they had become to each other was still too tender to expose to the rest of the world's cruel judgments. _She_ was still too tender. She'd been living with the silent fear of fallout from Tywin's revenge for too many weeks to just shrug it off like it was nothing now. No, better to get past this initial onslaught and then, when they had found their new routine, when she knew what in the seven hells her new team would even be called or who her crew would be, he would be waiting for her and then there would be nothing that could hold her back from him, not even his good intentions. 

Brienne had woken up the next morning to find Jaime already gone, off, he said in his note, to his scheduled therapy session in Harrenhal, and she had seen not enough of him since then. It was for the best, she supposed. Every time she did all she could focus on were the way his slim hips moved, the strong lines of his forearms, how sometimes he would catch her watching him and she could see him thinking, too, of what else they could be doing. 

A sweet kind of torture, something she might have even enjoyed if those two weeks hadn't also included the stress of talking to the police about Hoat, the negotiations with Petyr Baelish about how the rest of their agreement would unfold and on what timeline, and the uncomfortable tap-dance she had to perform to not tell her father anything until she could see him in person. Brienne was dreading that conversation more than any other, had complained about it at length to Jaime the day she was readying to leave, until he'd gently grabbed her shoulder while she was mid-pace, turned her to face him, and kissed her fast and hard, a shock of lightning across her unsteady bow. 

“What-?” she'd gasped. 

His eyes were a memory of the storm back on Tarth, but his voice was calm. “Your father loves you, he'll come around.” 

“You didn't have to kiss me first to tell me that,” she'd said, flustered, though she wanted so much to kiss him again she could already taste him. 

“I didn't have to, but it was quite effective,” he said with a forced grin. His fingers had curled into her skin as though he would pull her closer still. 

_Kiss me once more_, she'd wanted to say. _Love me now, because it will be weeks before we see each other again._ But she hadn't. Brienne had brushed his hand away and stifled her worries and they'd finished packing up her apartment for the move. She'd be in a hotel that night, and then Sandor would take her to the ferry in the morning. Brienne had had to buy a new piece of carry-on luggage to bring home all the mementos from her time with Jaime, including the lilacs he'd brought months before. 

He had seen her to the door of Sandor's car, had brushed his fingers down her arm and made her promise she'd call as soon as she was safely home. 

“You could come to Tarth,” she'd offered even though she had sworn she wouldn't. For a moment Jaime's friendly smile had slipped to show her just how difficult the space between them was for him, too. 

“I have to get started finding sponsors and crew. Baelish's press conference is in a week, we have to be ready.” 

“Of course,” she'd said, and then she'd squeezed his hand and gotten into the car and the worry he'd so briefly kissed away had returned in force. 

The ferry docked with a jolt and a thunk and Brienne sighed. She had to tell her father before Petyr's press conference, and she really should tell him before the end of the day. Goodwin had sworn he would protect what he knew due to attorney-client privilege, and given her father had not called her in a fury over the last two weeks she assumed Goodwin had kept his promise, but she couldn't entirely trust he'd continue to keep it if she put this off much longer. 

Her father was waiting for her again and she gave him a small wave, trying to be enthused but mostly just wishing Jaime had come with her. Selwyn hugged her in greeting and took her larger piece of luggage. 

“What's all that?” he asked, gesturing at her newer bag. 

“Just some things I picked up.” 

“Oh, from all the cities you visited? That's nice.” 

Brienne winced but just nodded along and they walked silently to his truck. She flushed just looking at the cab, remembering Jaime on top of her, inside her, the way he'd watched her come undone. Brienne had thought their time together had been so short she wouldn't see his memory here, but like staring at the sun and then looking away, being with him had left bright spots she couldn't blink away. 

She could feel her dad looking at her as they got into the truck, but she couldn't meet his eyes, afraid he'd see too much. 

“Are you hungry? We could stop at House of Fish on the way home.” 

“No, let's just get back. I'm tired.” 

“I'm sure you are.” Once they were on their way he asked, “You still working details out about the corruption saga? Goodwin won't tell me anything. Says he can't.” 

“He's right,” she confirmed. “I asked him not to. I thought I'd talk to you about it myself first.”

“Oh. I see.” Another minute and then: “Do you want to talk about it now?”

“I'd rather wait until we were home.” 

“All right then.” He turned on the radio and it washed out the memories of the sounds Jaime had made when he'd been sweaty and shuddering in her arms.

* * *

Jaime rubbed his real hand over his prosthetic one while he waited for Samwell to call him in for his appointment. He'd gotten the prosthetic weeks ago, but this was the first time he'd worn it out of his home. It was heavier than he'd remembered having a hand felt like, but that was likely the weight of the base and attachment combined. They were making him a state-of-the-art prosthetic for the new year, something fancy that he would be able to move with electrical impulses, or so they said. Myoelectric controls they'd called it, and it had sounded like science fiction. Brienne had come with him to that appointment at his request and they'd stared at the assortment of new hands available. 

“I wonder if I could get a dildo attachment?” he'd murmured when the doctor left them alone to talk and Brienne hadn't recovered until well after they'd left the office. 

Gods, he missed her. They'd only said goodbye last night, but they wouldn't see each other again until January once they figured out where the new team was going to set up shop. She should be on the ferry still, but getting near Tarth. He checked the weather on his phone: cool but clear there, better than Harrenhal where it was pouring buckets outside. Jaime had had to call a rideshare since Sandor had taken Brienne down to Storm's End to catch the ferry, and the man who had picked him up had complained nonstop about the rain, when he wasn't badly singing along to pop songs Jaime used to like. Jaime just hoped the man wasn't lingering in the area for the return ride home. 

“Jaime!” Samwell said from the doorway of his office, “come on in.” 

They settled in their chairs and exchanged their usual small talk, yet another routine that was shoring up the new supports in Jaime's life. 

“You're wearing your prosthetic today,” Samwell eventually said. 

Jaime looked down at it, touched the plastic fingers. “I thought it was worth trying.” 

“Why do you think it was worth trying now?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. I guess there was no reason to not do it.” 

“What had been the reason not to do it before?”

“I didn't need to.”

Samwell nodded encouragingly. “And now you feel you do need to wear it. Has anything else changed for you recently?” 

“No. Well, Brienne went back home, but we knew that was coming.” 

“Mm,” Samwell said, folding his hands together on top of his knees. “How do you feel with her gone?”

“Fine,” Jaime said, sharper than usual. 

“I can see that.” Jaime shot Samwell a dirty look but the other man just smiled pleasantly. He was always entirely pleasant, no matter how Jaime tried to rile him. It was obnoxious, but it also made Jaime feel more at ease. He wondered if there were anything he could tell Tarly that would throw him off his game. 

“I want to talk about Aerys today,” Jaime said, spurred to try it. 

“If you want. Go ahead.” 

“Tell me what you know about it first.” 

“Well, I'm not a Formula 1 fan, but I did do some research on you and I know that you got in an accident on the track with him when you were younger. That you struggled to come back from it for a long time after, and that some have given you a nickname.”

“Kingslayer,” Jaime said, the word like asphalt on his tongue. 

“Kingslayer,” Samwell said, except when he said it it sounded like just a word. 

“I hit him on purpose,” Jaime said fiercely. 

Samwell tilted his head a little. “Why?”

“He deserved it.”

“How did a young man barely turned nineteen determine someone deserved to die?”

“I didn't mean to kill him,” Jaime said hurriedly. He didn't want Samwell to hate him, he just wanted the man to know what he'd been capable of. 

“What _did_ you mean to do?”

“To stop him.” Jaime felt like his right-hand fingers were curled and twitching but all he could see was the plastic at rest in his lap. 

“From winning?”

“Gods, no,” Jaime said, his head jerking up in offense. “I would never have done that just to win.” 

“My apologies,” Samwell said. He sounded sincere and it settled Jaime back in the chair again. “What were you trying to stop Aerys from doing?”

“Hurting somebody else. He...” Jaime's missing fingers wouldn't stop twitching, no matter how hard he stared at the fake ones and willed them to peace. “I don't want to talk about Aerys anymore.” 

“All right.” Samwell sat back, too. “Then let's talk about who Aerys hurt.” 

Jaime glanced up at Tarly. “The only one I know for sure is Brandon Stark. He was lucky to survive that burn.” 

“That wasn't who I meant.” 

“There weren't any other victims that season,” Jaime frowned. 

Samwell's face was calm, and kind. “Did you ever consider you were one of Aerys' victims, too?” 

Jaime's left hand clenched into a tight fist, and he felt like his right one did too but his prosthetic insisted on lying there, useless. This had been a mistake. 

“I was barely even scratched in the accident,” he said hoarsely. He could remember how his steering wheel had jerked out of his hands, the incredible press of the g-forces when he'd come to an abrupt stop with the wall. But no, that had been Harrenhal, hadn't it? “Nothing happened to me,” he insisted. 

“I don't think that's true, Kingslayer,” Samwell said, the name still soft, floating, as though it could be picked up by the wind and blown away. 

Jaime felt like he might be blown away, like the name had been ripped from him and left behind just a shell in its absence, the outlines of the man he could have been if Aerys had lived. Samwell reached out and put his hand on Jaime's forearm, where the base met his skin, holding him down. “Have you ever talked to Brandon Stark, Jaime?”

“No,” he managed to say though his throat felt shut tight. 

“Perhaps someday you should.” Samwell leaned back again, all gentleness. “Why don't you have a drink of water while I open the window a little. I find the rain soothing, don't you?”

Jaime nodded his head and did as Samwell bid while the rain fell hard outside. 

“Is there anything you need right now?” Tarly asked when he'd taken his seat again. 

_Brienne_, Jaime thought. He needed her strength and her warmth and the weight of her heart against his. But what he said was, “I could use a cigarette,” and he laughed a little and Samwell laughed too, and the sound of their laughter in the rain was, for the moment, enough.

* * *

Brienne had managed to hold off telling her father anything when they got home, saying she wanted to go take a shower, to unpack so she could feel settled again; he'd kissed her hair and let her go, a puzzled look on his face. She texted Jaime that she'd arrived and still hadn't talked to her dad and she would call him later. He sent back just 'Miss you' and she smiled happily as she pulled out the mementos and set them around her space. By the time she ventured back out for dinner it was dark and late but she still wasn't hungry. 

“I'm making spaghetti,” her dad said when she entered the kitchen and took a deep breath of the spice and sauce smells. “I'll just get the pasta cooking and we can eat when it's done.” 

She wandered into the living room to look at his so-called Brag Board. He'd added more photos, but there was an unused gap where she guessed he'd been saving space for shots from the races after Harrenhal. Brienne wondered if he'd start a new board when she started driving, or if he'd just throw it away altogether, furious that she was taking such a dangerous chance. 

“Everything's ready!” he eventually called from the kitchen, so she joined him at the table and they talked about some of the regulars to the garage while they started on their meal. Halfway through, when it became obvious that her father was holding up the entirety of the conversation on his own, he set down his silverware and looked at her. 

“Out with it, short stuff.” 

Brienne's instinct was to feign ignorance, but if she was going to be brave enough to take on this challenge, she'd have to be brave enough to face her father, first. “I'm going to be a driver,” she blurted out, not knowing how to come up on it except facing it. 

“A driver for what?” her dad asked, frowning over his spaghetti. 

“In F1. Part of the agreement we made with IAF was that they would give me the seat Jaime left open.”

Her father took a long drink of the wine he'd opened special for her first night home, downing the entire glass. “You'll be driving for Lannister Corp?”

“No. We're starting our own constructor team, though I'll need the car.” 

“My car.”

“_Our_ car.” 

“You think I'll just let you do this after that crash of Lannister's? Absolutely not.” Selwyn's tone was heavy steel. 

“I wasn't really asking permission, Dad.” 

“You were for the car.” He picked up his plate and carried it to the counter even though he still had food. Brienne could not remember a single meal her dad hadn't eaten every last bite of. “My answer is no.” 

“I can still drive without it.”

“Not even you can build a brand new F1 car in three months. No car, no driving,” he said as though it were a simple equation with no emotional effects. 

“Dad-”

“_No_, Brienne, I won't give you the keys to hurt or even kill yourself.” He shoved his plate into the sink where it clattered and crashed but didn't break. “Find some other boon from IAF. You won't be getting this one.” 

Selwyn strode from the room and up the stairs to his bedroom. He had never been one to get mad even when she and Galladon were much younger and more likely to cause trouble; instead he'd simply sigh heavily and talk more slowly, like he knew his size could intimidate without intending to. For her father, this brief display was more intense than most men yelling. She got up and cleaned up the plates and the food and the mess in the sink, and retreated to her own house to call Jaime. 

“Hi, Wrench,” he said after picking up on the second ring. 

“Hi,” she breathed, feeling her shoulders relax. She hadn't even been aware of how tense they were. “How was your session today?”

“It was good. The drivers I had both there and back were terrible, though. Next time, I get the Hound.” 

She smiled a little. “Deal.”

“So how about you? How did it go with your dad?” 

“Not great. He completely refused to let me use the car.” 

“Can he even do that?”

“We've never really talked about who owns the car, so I suppose he can.” She wasn't used to her father being so firmly against her; even when he'd forbidden her from karting he'd redirected her to the mechanic work she grew to love. 

“If you really want this, you'll have to fight for it. He loves you, he'll listen if you show him how important it is.”

“I'm afraid,” she admitted. 

“Then use my belief in you as your courage,” he said and she felt a warm frisson in her heart. “Give him the night and talk to him again tomorrow.” 

“All right.” She heard the clink of something that was probably Jaime opening his fridge. 

“What are you wearing?” he asked. “Not something lacey, I hope, when I can't even be there to enjoy it.” 

She laughed a little. “Jeans and a button-down flannel. It's pretty cold here.” 

“Sounds snuggly,” he said and she could almost feel his arms around her. 

“What about you?”

“Sweat pants and an old t-shirt, honestly. You're not even gone a day and I've reverted to my laziest self.” She heard the pop-hiss of a soda can. “What do you need?” he asked, startling her. 

“Is that a therapy question?” 

“It is. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I like it.” It made her feel like every burden didn't have to be hers to bear alone. A new feeling, one that made her feel stronger, which she hadn't expected. “Talking to you is helping,” she said. 

“Good.” She could hear his smile. “Then turn on your TV, the next episode of our cooking show is on soon and I want to hear your response when your favorite inevitably goes down in flames.”

* * *

The next morning Brienne hesitantly entered her father's kitchen. He was standing at the counter, staring out the window into the backyard, slowly stirring his coffee. 

“Good morning, darling,” he said. 

She greeted him and poured her own mug of coffee before leaning against the counter near him, watching his face. He looked sadder than she'd seen in years. 

“You're going to ask me again, aren't you?” he said. 

“Of course I am.” 

“Why? You were a mechanic, a race engineer. Why isn't that enough?”

She took a sip of her coffee. “Because I've always wanted more, I just denied it to myself.” 

He frowned and finally glanced her way. “You seemed happy.”

“I was happy. I would have been fine working in your garage for the rest of my life. But part of that is because I didn't think there _was_ anything more.” She didn't mean to insult him, but the lines on his face deepened. “You were the one who told me it was my dream and that I should go for it.” 

“I didn't think you'd use that against me someday,” he grumbled, starting to thaw. 

“Dad,” she said and waited for him to look at her. “You know I wouldn't do something like this unless it really mattered to me. I was always more like you than Gal was. I'm not doing this just for the thrill. I love driving, and I want to see just how good I can be; I want to use this chance to do something good for the sport.” 

He exhaled and brushed his huge hand over her head. “It's not safe,” he said. 

“It's not. But it's safer than it's ever been. Jaime's accident was...unusual,” she said, not able to tell her father all of it yet. 

“He's not forcing you into this, is he?” her dad asked, narrowing his eyes. 

Brienne smiled a little. “No, he's not. He's not like you think, Dad. Especially now.” 

“Hm,” her father said, and she suspected he was seeing more than she had intended to give away. “I don't think I'll be able to watch any of your races.” 

“That's okay. I wouldn't ask that of you.” 

“I hate being so afraid. But...sometimes I still see Gal's truck.” 

She wrapped her arms around him and he clutched her tight to his side with one arm, kissing the top of her head. He felt strong and solid but it didn't mean he couldn't be scared, too. 

“Don't break our car,” he said sternly and she laughed, a watery, choked sound. “Ah, Brienne. You're going to be amazing, I know it already.”

“I'm going to try.” 

“You should invite Jaime here for Crone's Day.”

“What?”

“I assume he'll be paying for much of this?” 

“Yes. Well, between his money and some money from IAF.” 

“Good. I want to talk to him about it, and I think you'd be glad to have him here, too, wouldn't you?”

Brienne untangled herself and knew her cheeks were pink under his knowing stare. “Yes,” she said, “I'd be glad.” 

“Make sure you tell him I'll be very disappointed if he doesn't come.” His voice was serious but his eyes were twinkling, and when she laughed this time it was all happiness.

* * *

Petyr Baelish held a press conference a week later, announcing that Brienne would be joining F1 as a new driver for an as-yet-unnamed constructor, and they were thrilled to welcome her to the field to show IAF's commitment to diversity. Jaime had rolled his eyes at that and Brienne, on the phone with him from her house, had snorted derisively. 

They'd gotten IAF to agree that she wouldn't have to be there in person for the announcement and though Jaime had tried to talk Brienne into going, she'd looked so nervous he hadn't pushed too hard. When Petyr went on to say that Lannister Corp had graciously agreed to donate their LST bonus in its entirety to the new team, he thought it was best she wasn't there; Brienne would not have been capable of hiding the bitter taste of that falsehood. The weeks of negotiation with IAF had resulted in a few agreements they were struggling to swallow, but if Brienne were going to drive, if they were going to try to bring his father down permanently, they'd have to eat a little shit on the way to do it. 

Once Brienne had called with the good news about the car – and the terrifying news about her father wanting him to visit – they'd let Petyr know they were ready to move forward and the last pieces started clicking into place. The media attention after the press conference was instant and overwhelming, even for him, and he was grateful Brienne was back on Tarth. Journalists appeared in front of his building almost overnight with no threats from Lannister Corp anymore to keep them away. Jaime hadn't been in front of cameras since before his accident, and he held his prosthetic hand down and a little behind him as he answered questions, stating firmly his support for Brienne both monetarily and as a believer, and ignoring questions about Hoat and the crash and the gambling ring. When he finally escaped back up to his apartment, everyone was disappointed by the limited answers he'd been able to give. 

The crowd would filter their way to the island soon enough, but it was home field advantage for her, and he was certain the islanders wouldn't put up with the media circus the same way everywhere else in Westeros did. Jaime was almost looking forward to seeing it happen.

He was also grateful that they weren't together for this first part, which felt strange, but there had been no mention of Jaime's role during Petyr's press conference and while 'eager funder' was what he was, it would have looked even more unusual to be with her on Tarth when the media first arrived. Jaime missed her constant presence, but the daily phone calls and occasional text messages would have to do. 

Besides, Jaime thought, looking up at the snarling Direwolf logo on the building in front of him, he had work still to do here on the mainland. 

Brienne had arranged this meeting for him via Arya, and he was absolutely not convinced he was the right person to hold it, but she'd been so sure. “We're going to be setting up a whole new constructor team, don't you think it's a good idea to get some advice on what to do?”

“But from _Ned Stark_?” he'd asked. 

“Well it's not going to be your father, and the only other person nearly as successful is Martell at Sunspear and I figured you'd want to learn from the best. The Starks aren't that bad, Jaime, and I think it's good that they see that you're not Lannister Corp anymore.”

He was annoyed by how right she was about all of it. 

Now that he was here he wished she'd been a little less right, but he took a breath, put on his most confident grin, and strode inside anyway. 

“Mr. Lannister,” the woman at the front desk said with a bright smile. “Welcome to Direwolf Racing. I'll let Ned know you're here.” 

Ned? Jaime's father would have fired any receptionist who failed to refer to him as Mr. Lannister. 

“He'll be down in a few minutes,” the woman said, “can I get you anything while you wait?”

If Ned were anything like Tywin Lannister, it would be fifteen minutes or more, but Jaime just shook his head. “I'm fine.” He turned his attention to the line of trophies along one wall, the photographs on the other. It was similar to how Lannister Corp showed their history, except many of Direwolf's photos were of crew and support staff, the thousand small pieces that made the whole engine work. At least one important lesson to takeaway, Jaime knew. 

Ned did only take a few minutes. He stepped through a side door looking exactly as he always did: long, serious face; long, serious hair; and gray eyes that were always weighing everything. Jaime had always been found wanting under that stare, but today Ned seemed neutral. 

“Jaime Lannister,” he said in his serious voice, before holding out his left hand to shake. “I was sorry to hear about your accident.” 

Jaime hesitated for a moment before shaking it. “Thank you for meeting with me.” 

“My daughter insisted on it.” He gestured for Jaime to follow him through the main doors. “She's quite fond of that race engineer of yours.” 

Jaime grinned. “Most people are.” 

Ned took him on a weaving path through the Direwolf spaces, showing off the well-oiled machine his family had built and that he was now responsible for. He pointed out key departments, talked a little about the way they operated, but he kept Jaime clear of any of the more secretive engineering spaces. Things were quiet now since it was post-season break, but there was still wrap-up work to do and planning had already begun for next season. 

Jaime's heart beat dull and sharp at the same time, loss and anticipation swirling together in a confusing mix. This was all so familiar, even in these entirely different spaces. Post-season work had, over the course of his career, been a mixed bag. Especially after Aerys, he'd often spent those weeks berating himself and the team for yet another terrible season, but there'd also been the undercurrent of hope that _next year_ it could be different. This year should have been the best post-season of his life, a celebration of everything they had accomplished, but at least he still had the promise of next season just around the corner. All they needed was office space. And a team. And a _name_. Jaime sighed. The work ahead of them was overwhelming to consider all at once; he knew they could do it, but it would take every bit they had to give. 

He and Ned eventually ended up in a wide corner office bright with winter sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. 

“Have a seat,” Ned said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Do you want anything?”

“No, thanks.” He watched Ned pour himself a glass of something amber and sit down behind his dark wood desk. It didn't have the imposing heft Tywin's did, but it felt like a seat of power nonetheless. Ned Stark may not be as ruthless as Jaime's father, but he was not a soft man, either, and he was prideful in his own way. “You have a solid company here.” 

“We've worked hard at it.” 

Jaime waited but Ned didn't seem interested in expanding. Robb had apparently gotten his social skills from his mother, not his father. 

“I'll get to the point,” Jaime started, “we're starting a new constructor team and we could use some guidance on what all that entails.” 

“Your family has their own team, why would you come to me?”

Jaime tried for a smirk and fell far short, his mouth twisting pathetically . “We've had a falling out.” 

“The gambling.” Ned's brow darkened. “Terrible business. But that was just some of the crew, wasn't it?”

Jaime rubbed his hand on his knee, trying to figure out how to tell Ned enough to convince him without having to lie in order to protect the agreement. “I've never gotten along well with my father, and he would be more worried about our team stealing secrets than actually helping us.” 

Ned lifted an eyebrow. “What makes you think we won't feel the same?”

“You're more honorable than that,” Jaime said, shrugging a little. The Direwolf name had been built on the backs of Stark integrity, and Ned was no different in that than his father and his grandfather had been. Robb was following suit from what Jaime could see, which had made the sting of losing to him so often hurt a little less. IAF hadn't accepted Robb's noble gesture on the podium – he was still listed as World Champion and there was no asterisk – but Jaime would never forget it. 

“Honor,” Ned said, rolling the word around in his mouth, and Jaime grimaced. Ned had been one of the first to argue for removing Jaime from F1 after Aerys' crash; he'd seemed entirely unwilling to believe Jaime could be anything but reckless and untrustworthy. Many of the others had followed suit because of Ned's opinion. “My daughter tells me you've discovered some shred of it this season.” 

“Never too late to become a better man,” Jaime said lightly, but Ned didn't smile. 

Instead he picked up his phone and said, “Tell him to come in when he has a minute.” 

“That sounds ominous,” Jaime said. He forced himself to relax back in the handcrafted chair. 

After a handful of intensely silent seconds, the office door opened and Jaime looked back and felt the blood drain from his face. There was Brandon Stark, his scarred and bald head, his ruined left arm and leg. He hobbled into the room and sat down in a chair near Jaime's, exhaling slowly from the effort. 

“Jaime,” Brandon said in greeting. His voice was strong, even though his body still bore so many scars. 

“Brandon,” he managed. “It's good to see you.” He meant it; Aerys had made them watch the replay of Brandon's crash enough times that Jaime was sometimes, even now, only half-certain the man had survived. 

“I heard you were going to be meeting with my brother here, and I wanted to stop by. Why didn't you ever visit me after my crash? Or Aerys'?” he asked. 

“I, uh.” Jaime froze, he felt nineteen again and alone against the world. It was only a matter of time until Ned called him Kingslayer and threw him from his office. “We didn't know each other that well. I didn't want to bother you,” he said. 

Brandon snorted. He looked so much older than he was, but he was alive. “I wish you had come to see me,” he said. “I would have told you what none of these other cowards ever could: you did the right thing.” 

Jaime's mouth dropped open and he heard Ned sigh heavily. “I'm sorry?”

“With Aerys. I remember every second leading up to the crash, I know that was no accident. I've known this entire time. No one would listen to me, though, they all thought I was too traumatized by the fire. I cried when they told me Aerys had died. I was grateful.” 

“I didn't mean to kill him,” Jaime stammered, struck half-dumb with shock. 

“You did the world a favor anyway,” Brandon said. 

“Brandon,” Ned reprimanded. “It's never good when a man dies.” 

“He was no man,” Brandon muttered. “He was a monster.” Then he turned his still-sharp eyes to Jaime. “I wanted to see you to finally tell you. I probably should have tried harder, but we've both been a little busy.” 

Jaime smiled, the smallest pull of his lips, and it felt strange and tight on his face. “Just a little.” 

“Well,” Brandon said, slapping his hands against the tops of his legs. “Don't let me take up any more of your and Ned's time. I promised I'd make it quick.” He stood, moving slow and finding his balance, and then nodded at Jaime's prosthetic hand. “I hope you don't feel like that's some sort of karmic punishment. Was a damn shame you lost it. You reminded me of you again this season, but better. You might even have beaten Dayne driving like that.” 

This time, Jaime's smile was genuine and full. “I would have,” he said. Brandon grinned back at him, and for a moment Jaime was a cocky teenager and Brandon Stark was still a worthy opponent and not the evidence of everything that was worst about Aerys. Then Brandon coughed a little and grimaced in pain and he limped back out the door. 

When Jaime turned to look at Ned, the other man had finally finished weighing Jaime according to his complicated and heavy moral scale, and he seemed to have come around to approval. Jaime's first instinct was to kick it away again; he hadn't needed Ned's approval up until now, and he knew he'd deserved it long before this. But Jaime had promised Brienne he would try, and it was refreshing to finally be recognized as an equal even if it was by a man who had been so instrumental in Jaime's distance from the sport. “I can put together some baseline requirements for setting up a new team. You'll have just the one driver, right?”

“Yes. Just Brienne.” 

Ned nodded. “The whole thing is already causing a shockwave. It's been so long since a woman even tried to enter a race, and the media focus on the sport is so different now. It's going to be difficult.” 

“She can do it.” 

“I don't doubt she'll do her best. You'll be at a disadvantage. There's a lot to do to have a car ready, even an existing one, to compete at this level. You'll have to hire a huge amount of people. Find a place to put them. You're sure you can do it? Won't IAF wait a season?”

“We can't wait,” Jaime said. They had talked briefly about it after Brienne had agreed to drive, but all of them had concurred that this would be their only chance to get her in and bring Tywin down. “It has to be now.” 

“Then we'll be glad to provide you some guidance to get started. Arya might make our family Long Night gathering unbearable if we don't,” Ned said with a small, wry grin. Jaime wasn't honestly sure he'd ever seen Ned Stark smile at all before. 

“Thank you,” Jaime said, sincere. He wondered what he would have said a year ago if someone had told him he'd be working with the head of Direwolf at the end of this year. It would have been entirely unthinkable. 

“If you've got time, we can get started now.” 

_The wolf and the lion, side-by-side. What a world_, Jaime thought. “I've got nothing but time for this. Let's get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to Brynn for being my Spaghetti Consultant. She wears many hats for this fic.


	24. December (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Crone's Day Eve, Jaime stood, eager, at the ferry's bow, watching Tarth come into view. Even in the rain the dull gray light couldn't hide the island's natural beauty, but it wasn't the waters or the meadows or the mountains that he was yearning to see. 
> 
> He was first in line to disembark once the ferry docked, and hurried off the moment they were released, immediately spotting Brienne in the lobby. Jaime lifted his prosthetic hand to get her attention and she broke into a wide, brilliant smile as soon as their eyes met. With muttered apologies to people loitering in his way looking for their loved ones, Jaime navigated through the crowd, dropped his luggage, and wrapped his arms around her as soon as he was in reach. 
> 
> Brienne yelped and hugged him back, a strong and comforting embrace. Their bodies pressed tight from chest to knees and he buried his face in her neck for a moment, left one tender kiss there under her thin hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to turquoisecity for pointing out this article talking about [Jamie Chadwick, a woman driver with her eye on moving to F1, and she's got a real chance to do it](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/19/this-is-my-adrenaline-fix-jamie-chadwick-f1-first-female-hope-in-43-years). Life imitating art hopefully!

On Crone's Day Eve, Jaime stood, eager, at the ferry's bow, watching Tarth come into view. Even in the rain the dull gray light couldn't hide the island's natural beauty, but it wasn't the waters or the meadows or the mountains that he was yearning to see. 

He was first in line to disembark once the ferry docked, and hurried off the moment they were released, immediately spotting Brienne in the lobby. Jaime lifted his prosthetic hand to get her attention and she broke into a wide, brilliant smile as soon as their eyes met. With muttered apologies to people loitering in his way looking for their loved ones, Jaime navigated through the crowd, dropped his luggage, and wrapped his arms around her as soon as he was in reach. 

Brienne yelped and hugged him back, a strong and comforting embrace. Their bodies pressed tight from chest to knees and he buried his face in her neck for a moment, left one tender kiss there under her thin hair. 

“I missed you,” she sighed into his ear before pulling away. Reluctantly he did, too. As he picked up his luggage again he noticed a small, birdlike woman with white hair watching them with a happy smile. Jaime winked at her. 

“Hi,” he said to Brienne, enjoying the way her smile turned warm, the hint of a blush already playing across the bridge of her nose. 

“Hi. Trip was okay?”

“Took too long,” he said and that brought the color to her cheeks with her pleased smile. “I should have taken one of those prop planes in.”

“There's not that many flights in and out, you'd have been here the same time anyway. Come on,” she said, leading the way, “I'll drive you home.” 

It had been weeks since they'd seen each other, their longest time apart since they'd first met in January. Every Lannister Jaime knew, even Tyrion, would have made fun of him for how attached he'd grown to Brienne, but it wasn't that he couldn't function without her, he just didn't want to. It wasn't lost on him that his life had expanded after his greatest loss, and he was grateful for reconnecting with Addam, for re-adjusting with Bronn, but nothing could paper over the spaces in his life and his heart that he'd given to Brienne. 

“You're wearing your prosthetic,” she noted once they'd gotten going. 

He held it up a little, twisting the plastic this way and that. “I've been giving it a try. My new one will be ready next month and my PT said while I'm learning how to use it I should get used to having the weight the rest of the time. Is it okay?” 

“It's fine,” she said, seemingly confused by the question. “It's up to you.” 

He should have known that she wouldn't care, but he'd been nervous nonetheless. When he'd first started wearing the prosthetic he'd felt more self-conscious about his missing hand than he had since he'd lost it, like the hunk of useless plastic was a billboard drawing attention. There were times even now, when it was the middle of the night and his phantom fingers were twitching, that he wondered if Brienne's care and attention were mostly guilt or pity, that when they were finally ready to take the next step she wouldn't want to be touched by his stump, even if she didn't mind touching it herself. Sitting with her now, her hand reaching out to hold his left one as she drove, he was embarrassed by his own ungenerous assumptions. Jaime pulled her hand up to kiss the top and grinned when her cheeks went patchy red. 

“So about my dad,” she said, and Jaime's nerves buzzed. “I didn't tell him anything about us, but he suspects something.” 

“Oh gods is that why he wanted me to come? I'm going to have to go through some terribly outdated father-knows-best interrogation?” 

“No,” she said, laughing. “Well, maybe a little. You know how my dad is by now. But I think he just wants to get to know you better.”

“Then I'm definitely in trouble,” Jaime said, only half-joking. 

Brienne frowned a little at him but their talk turned to racing preparations, going again through the outline that Ned had helped them build. The Direwolf owner had grown increasingly interested in their progress and had left his phone and door open for whenever they needed to call. By the time they were nearly back to her house, Jaime had temporarily forgotten about Selwyn, though it came rushing back as soon as Brienne parked in the drive. The front door banged open when the headlights turned off and Selwyn came out, as tall and broad as ever, his face a pleasantly welcoming mask. 

Jaime glanced at Brienne and she smiled encouragingly. 

He got out of the truck and held his left hand out to Selwyn first; Jaime still wasn't comfortable shaking with the prosthetic. 

“Welcome back,” Selwyn said as they shook hands in what seemed to be a non-threatening manner. Jaime's palm was sweatier than it should have been, but Selwyn seemed at ease. “Come on inside. Here,” he grabbed Jaime's luggage and lifted it with easy strength, “I'll get that for you.” 

Jaime had wanted to stay at the Lighthouse Inn again but Selwyn had insisted Jaime stay in his guest room. Jaime hadn't been able to decide if that was a “keep your friends close” or “enemies closer” type situation but based on the older man's warm smile, the way he set the luggage down in the room and showed off the small, attached bathroom, it seemed like it was the former. 

Selwyn's house was decorated for Crone's Day with real and plastic lanterns, strings of lights, various images of the Crone leading all sorts of people through darkness, and a surprising amount of hand-made seven-pointed stars hung all over. Jaime paused in the hallway to admire a child's drawing of the Crone done in crayon, with incomprehensible squiggles that could have been children following her, and Brienne's name written in careful block letters underneath. He pictured her as a girl from the few photos in Selwyn's house, when she was gap-toothed and freckled and too young to care, and he felt a surge of tender protectiveness. Brienne wouldn't be the woman she was now without what she'd gone through, but he would have spared her gentle heart if he could. He brushed his fingers across her name and hurried down the rest of the stairs when he heard her and Selwyn talking. 

Brienne's eyes lit up like bright blue beacons when she saw him, and he knew he must have looked just as happy to see her. Selwyn watched them both curiously. 

“Have a good journey?” her father asked in his deep voice. 

“Good enough. The waters were calm but that's a chilly wind. Thank you, again, for letting me stay here. I really can get a room at the Inn if it becomes an imposition.” 

“Nonsense, Tarths don't let friends stay in hotels,” he said casually. Selwyn went to grab drinks for them while Jaime settled on the couch near Brienne and tried not to grin at her too wide. 

They spent a pleasant afternoon talking about the work to be done and some of what Selwyn had been up to, and then when Argella arrived for dinner, Selwyn boomed that the men would be making the meal and he'd ushered Jaime, his nervousness renewed, into the kitchen. 

Jaime had never been one for cooking; for much of his life anything that took more than two ingredients had been prepared for him, first by their nanny and then by the personal chefs hired to keep him well-fed and focused. Even once he'd struck out further from the Lannister name, he'd get prepared meals instead of preparing them himself. Jaime might be able to scramble eggs or put a chicken in the oven, but even before he'd lost his hand, chopping and sauteing and whatever-the-hells blanching was were not skills he was confident about, or even had. He glanced down at his hand and hoped Selwyn had not decided to reveal an unexpected mean streak tonight. 

“What's for dinner?” Jaime asked, sounding gratifyingly casual to his own ears. It already smelled warm and delicious here, a pleasant mix of buttery fish and vegetables. 

“I've been simmering a seafood stew for awhile and I'm going to make some biscuits while you help get a simple salad ready. I've got everything chopped in the fridge, just need you to add it to the bowl and toss it and then use that recipe to get the dressing together.” Selwyn pointed out the ingredients to Jaime. “I know you drivers don't generally concern yourselves with such mundane things as cooking, so I gave you something simple.” Brienne's father shot him a quick, easy smile and Jaime relaxed a little. “If you need any help with measuring things out,” Selwy added, nodding briefly at Jaime's prosthetic hand, “let me know.” 

They started work in silence, Jaime focusing on the task with the same intensity he would bring to a last lap showdown. He was not going to embarrass himself or Brienne by screwing up salad, damn it. When Selwyn spoke up after Jaime had pulled out all the containers and gotten started, Jaime startled, sending salad mix jumping out of the bowl. “I'm glad you could make it down for the feast. I've always tried to fill the house a little on Crone's Day for Brienne. It can get lonely when it's just the two of us.” 

Jaime picked up the runaway lettuce leafs and then reached for the small container of apple pieces to dump into the salad bowl. “My family has an enormous get-together every year. A truly obscene amount of food served to an absurd amount of people, most of whom don't like each other very much. They certainly don't like me.” _And they'll like me even less this year._ “I'm looking forward to trying something cozier.” 

“I hope it's not too disappointing.” 

“That seems impossible,” Jaime said with a small smile. He'd be with Brienne; how could it be bad? 

Selwyn hummed a little. “I was surprised when Brienne said she was going to be driving in F1 next year,” he said. 

“So was she at first.” Jaime lifted his head from where he'd been focused at the kitchen island, but didn't turn to look at Selwyn. “She'll be great.” 

“I know. But when you came to my shop you were looking for a mechanic, not a driver.” 

Jaime glanced down at his prosthetic hand resting casually on the edge of the island. “A lot has changed in the last year.” 

“Yes it has.” There was the solid thunk of Selwyn setting his mixing bowl down and they stood there, backs to each other, both not moving for a minute. “I have some money,” Selwyn said. “More than I think even Brienne realizes. If she's really going to do this, I want to be a part of it, even if I don't watch a single race.” 

“What did you have in mind?” Jaime asked carefully. 

“I've purchased the empty lot next to the garage, and a warehouse a step down from that, and they're starting building on both. I want you to operate here on Tarth. And I want Brienne to drive under the name Evenstar Racing.” They turned to face each other at the same time, Selwyn all casual challenge. 

“Have you asked her about any of this?”

“We haven't talked about it much at all. Brienne, like every islander, has an independent streak as big as Tarth. I'm proud of her for that, but sometimes she gets a little...”

“Stubborn,” Jaime supplied and they shared an understanding look. 

“That would be a fair description, yes. I was hoping if I got you on my side, we might be able to present a united front when I take the idea to her. I suspect she'll look to you for your opinion on it.”

“What do you want in exchange?”

Selwyn frowned. “I'm giving the money freely. I just want to invest, nothing more. I wasn't lying when I told you before, that life isn't for me anymore.” 

He seemed sincere, but Jaime's entire experience suggested it wouldn't be that easy. It was never that easy when money was involved. “That's a lot of money to not take a part. Why would you be willing to do that?” 

Selwyn leaned back against the counter and folded his enormous arms over his chest. “We've got distance here from the hubbub of the media and the potential in-fighting. I can't protect her when she's racing, but I can give her a safe place to return to.” 

Jaime considered having the offices here on Tarth. Every race week would require an extra day of travel to ship the car, but they would only have one racing team instead of two, which would help. And whatever Selwyn spent on getting the spaces together was money Jaime could spend instead on crew and engineers and materials for testing and replacement during the year. He wasn't convinced Selwyn would be a silent investor, but he was fairly sure he wouldn't want to be more than the official Owner. It would mostly be a glory role for their small company, shaking hands and receiving trophies if they earned any. The team principal would do most of the management work, a role Jaime suspected he was going to end up responsible for, though he was ready to step in as Brienne's race engineer if she wanted him. 

“What if I say no?”

“Then I'll try to convince Brienne anyway.” 

Jaime tilted his head, examining Selwyn's face. “You don't like to lose, do you?” 

“Not when it comes to the people I love.” 

“I'm going to suggest we get a clear contract of what you'll provide and when, and what your role will be.” 

“That's fair,” Selwyn said. 

“And if Brienne doesn't agree, we don't do it.” 

“Deal.” He turned back to his biscuit preparation. 

“You must have a lot more money than you let on,” Jaime said, and Selwyn shrugged his mountainous shoulders. 

“I never saw need to do much with it. Gave some away, stored some of it for emergencies. Money causes problems, as you are aware.” 

Jaime let that dig at his family slide; it was true, anyway. “And Brienne doesn't know?”

“Not exactly.” 

“Why not?”

“She doesn't need the stress. I just wanted her to have a safe life. A simple life.” The grief of all the things he'd lost was heavy in Selwyn's voice. 

“Then why in the seven hells did you let her come with me?” Jaime muttered. 

Selwyn turned his profile towards Jaime. “Because you were the only one who didn't look at her like she was a freak.” Jaime swallowed hard around the sudden tightness in his chest. “And now,” Selwyn went on, “you look at her like she's perfect.” 

“Well,” Jaime said roughly, “that's because she is.” 

Selwyn's beard twitched with his smile and he turned back to his food. Jaime took a quiet breath and turned back to his as well. He was about halfway through the dressing when Selwyn spoke up again. 

“You love her,” he said and Jaime dropped his measuring spoon. 

“I. Uh.” Was this a trap, like the wrist had been?

“I'm not completely daft,” Selwyn said. In one big step he was at Jaime's side, helping him clean up the small mess he'd made. “You two aren't exactly subtle when you're in a room together.” Jaime blinked down at the island counter feeling like a rabbit frozen before a wolf. “Goodness, boy, calm down, it's just an observation.” 

_Boy_. That made Jaime snort. He hadn't been a boy for a very long time. 

“So why haven't you asked my daughter out yet?” 

Jaime choked on his own surprised noise. The man seemed to be enjoying Jaime's sudden disarray. “It's not really a good time,” he finally managed under Selwyn's extremely piercing stare. Jaime had seen similar on Brienne before; she was very much her father's daughter in that way. “With everything that's happened, with what's still to come, it seems like the wrong time to start something new between us.” It was the truth, and though Selwyn looked disappointed by it he just nodded a little. 

“Shame to let fear stop you.”

“Fear is a powerful motivator,” Jaime said pointedly. 

Selwyn had the grace to look ashamed. “I know that too well. I hope you're making the right choice.” 

“We are, for now.” Jaime was swiftly growing uncomfortable with even talking about it without Brienne there, and he craned his head to look into the living room, saw her listening to Argella talking excitedly about something. Seeing her settled his jangling nerves. 

“I know she's an adult,” Selwyn said. He was back at the oven, sliding the biscuits in. “She's never been in love before. Not like I loved her mother. She doesn't know how much it will hurt. Everyone thinks a woman that tall, with how she looks, that she's impervious to pain. But she feels all of it more than anyone. You could hurt her in a way no one has before.” 

“I won't,” Jaime said firmly. “Not on purpose.” 

Selwyn sighed and then turned to consider him. He stared so intently for so long that Jaime wanted to look away, but he couldn't; not when Brienne's heart was on the line. “I trust you,” Selwyn eventually said. 

“Thanks,” Jaime said, “but it doesn't matter if you trust me. All that matters is what she thinks.” 

Selwyn's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second and he straightened, tall and broad and filling the kitchen, and Jaime wasn't afraid but he did fleetingly wonder if the Lighthouse Inn would still have an open room tonight, until Selwyn broke into an impressed smile. “That's the right answer,” he said. He clapped Jaime hard on the back with one giant hand and the air whooshed out. “You're a surprise, Jaime. I like that. Come on, let's tell her about my offer and see how much arguing we're going to have to do before we make it to dessert.”

* * *

Brienne woke up Crone's Day morning and stared at her ceiling. Her dad and Jaime had served them food, Jaime beaming proudly when she'd complimented the salad, and then they'd dropped the bombshell of her father's proposed investment. Though she'd protested – at length – about using her dad's money, he'd eventually convinced her he had enough of it and a desire to spend it how he wanted, so she relented. Racing under her ancestors' title made her decision feel right in a way she couldn't have imagined when she and Jaime had idly tossed around other team names before. Brienne had hugged her dad and kissed his cheek and then she'd turned to Jaime and kissed him hard on the lips without thinking before she nearly leapt backward again. At least both of them, for once, were blushing red. 

Argella had crowed, “I _knew_ it,” in a victorious tone and that had broken the awkwardness. Her father had just watched her with his quiet, knowing stare and she knew they'd probably have a conversation in their future when Jaime had gone. 

After the teen had scampered back to her house for the night, Brienne and Jaime and Selwyn had stayed up far too late talking plans, Selwyn showing them what he'd already bought and his suggestions for how to build out the warehouse, and they'd all shuffled off to bed only when Brienne could barely keep her eyes open. It had been strange to retreat to her small house and leave Jaime with her dad, but they'd seemed to be getting along and she was not about to sneak into his room or sneak Jaime into hers. Not yet. No matter how much she lay there now wishing she had. 

Now it was Crone's Day and Jaime was one house over, his body probably stretched warm and lazy in the guest bed, his sharp eyes soft with sleep. So close she could imagine she heard his slow breathing, feel his breath tickling her neck.

Brienne shook her head and forced herself to stop thinking about him. She sat up abruptly in bed and stared at the string of multicolored lantern lights glowing outside her window and spent a truly absurd amount of time figuring out what she was going to wear. She ended up with jeans and a warm sweater like always, but at least she was able to get up and get going on the day. 

When she entered the kitchen, neither her dad nor Jaime were up yet, so she started the coffee pot and idly twirled a seven-pointed star hanging from the ceiling over the table while she waited. As she poured her first cup, she heard footsteps behind her, too light to be her dad's. Brienne's fingers tightened on her coffee cup before she turned to casually rest her hip against the counter and take in Jaime, bleary-eyed, bedheaded, and looking as entirely kissable as she had imagined he would when she was in her house. 

“That smells delicious,” he said, his voice raspy with sleep. He shuffled over and kissed her softly. “You taste delicious,” he added with a smile. 

“You're not making this any easier,” she said, but she kissed him again, a soft slide of warm lips, teasing, gentle, both of them wanting more but neither asking for it, until they heard Selwyn's heavy step above them. 

Selwyn rounded them up after breakfast and they all climbed into the truck, Brienne in the middle, and left for the morning Crone's Day service at the nearest sept. She and her dad, at least, were what she'd heard bitter septons call 'Holiday Faithful,' but for as non-religious as Brienne generally was in her life, she'd come to appreciate these moments of ceremony, especially when her brother had died. She had spent a lot of time in the dark of night lying in bed, begging for the Stranger, the Mother, to be merciful with his soul, lighting candles in septs in the hopes they'd light his way. 

Brienne had always liked the Crone, that She was older and not as beautiful as the Maiden, that She was wiser and more patient than the Warrior. She liked that the Crone provided light in the darkness, and every lighthouse on Tarth had at least one small symbol of Her somewhere inside, a talisman to keep the lights burning on the darkest nights. She also liked that Crone's Day signified the longest night was here and soon the world would start waking up again, the stormy dark gray skies of winter would once more become the lighter and nurturing rains of spring. That hope had gotten them all through the worst of it and things would soon turn for the better. As Brienne lit her candle after the ceremony, she prayed that the same was true for her and Jaime. 

They spent the rest of the day preparing for the feast. Her uncle couldn't make it this year but Goodwin and his wife were coming, as were Argella and her parents, and they were all bringing food to share so Jaime and Brienne cleaned up and prepared the table while Selwyn made a few small sides and smoked huge slabs of pink salmon for hours, Crone's Day songs playing in the background. The domesticity of it was simple and even though she expected him to look bored, whenever Brienne paused to look at Jaime he was always smiling. Her heart was a slow-burning coal in her chest, watching him laugh with her father, furrow his brow as he carefully folded the cloth napkins one-handed. She was struck with a sudden, burning desire to see him again here in the budding spring, on the shores of Tarth in the summer, when the leaves turned orange and red once more in fall, and every season after and she had to stare down at her hands to stop them trembling. They hadn't even officially gotten back together yet; the future was too vast and uncertain to want anything more now. But it didn't stop her from wanting it anyway. 

When Argella arrived she and Jaime fist-bumped and then he held out his left hand to shake the hands of her parents, Argilac and Valaena. Argilac was compact and stocky, his dark skin weathered from a lifetime of storms, a fisherman from a family of fishermen, and Valaena was the same, though she had a head for crafty past-times. Neither of them seemed to understand their hi-tech daughter at all, but they were kind, if clueless, and they were good neighbors. They'd brought loaves of oatbread, still warm, and two giant jugs of cider as well. When Brienne introduced Jaime as her friend, Argella just smirked at them but remained quiet. They'd gotten her to agree to keep it covert and thankfully the girl loved a good secret. Brienne suspected it was partly for blackmail purposes, but she didn't mind owing a debt to the teen. 

Goodwin and his wife Jeyne showed up shortly after loaded down with a big pot of winter squash soup and the traditional Sept-approved Holiday Buns for dessert. He gave Jaime a thorough looking over once he'd set the pot down, and then a cursory handshake. But by the time they were all holding cups of cider – the adults' with a dash of something extra – the mood was friendly and warm, and it extended through dinner. When the time came for the traditional darkening of the house to light the single lantern, they offered to let Jaime say the prayer to the Crone, but he'd looked so panicked that Goodwin had stepped in to save him. 

After the prayer and another hour of quiet conversation about the winter and the upcoming new year, much of it around Brienne's new role, the guests left Jaime, Brienne, and her father sitting around the fire Selwyn had started. Once it was just the three of them, Brienne moved to sit next to Jaime on the couch, and he put his arm between them, his hand pressed against hers while they stared at the dancing flames. 

“We should open presents before we all fall asleep,” Selwyn suggested.

“Yes!” Jaime said, standing. “One second.” Brienne watched him disappear, taking the stairs two at a time. 

“He's a good man,” Selwyn said and she looked over at her dad. He'd kept that same watchful gaze on her and Jaime for most of the night. She heard Jaime moving around upstairs. 

“He is,” she said. 

“He wasn't like that before. That's your doing.”

“No,” she said, frowning. “It's entirely his. All I did was believe that he could.”

Jaime came clattering back down the stairs, three packages tucked under his arm, a smile on his face. “I know you didn't get anything for me, but I couldn't resist, especially with your hospitality,” he said, handing the large gift to Selwyn and the small one to Brienne. 

Selwyn grunted and pulled out a small wrapped package and handed it to Jaime. “I told you,” her dad said to Jaime's stunned face, “we take care of our friends.” 

“Crone's gifts first,” Brienne said, squeezing his knee. 

“Right.” He blinked and set a package of warm socks near the lantern. “These are for the Crone when She's walking through the cold.”

Brienne laid a new sweater next to the socks. “This is for when She's leading us in the night,” she said softly. 

“This,” Selwyn said, putting a couple pair of gloves on top of the sweater, “is for when She's holding the light.” 

The offerings would all be donated to the temple the following day and from there passed out to the poor. It was one of Brienne's favorite parts about Crone's Day. They sat quietly for a minute and then Selwyn clapped his hands not-too-loudly. 

“Now our turn! Open mine first,” he said, nodding at the two of them. Brienne gestured for Jaime to start and he unwrapped the small package, finding a plain looking box inside. Brienne craned her neck to see what it was as he lifted the lid; her father had been decidedly secretive. On a bed of silk was a twig covered in moss. Jaime opened his mouth, shut it, glanced in confusion at her, and then up at Selwyn who burst into loud, booming laughter. A slow realization stealing over her, Brienne hurriedly opened hers and found an old, ripped up sock, and she started laughing, too. 

Galladon used to wrap joke presents every year – once a piece of gum, another time a muddy rock. Brienne had loved the way he'd watch them with an entirely serious face, swearing every single time that he was much too old to do it again this year and then howling with laughter when they made a big show of being upset. After Gal had died, they had stopped that tradition, until now, when her father had decided to bring it back, and it felt like Galladon was with them, sharing their joy. 

Still laughing, Selwyn pulled out two boxes he'd hidden on the other side of his recliner. “Here are your real presents,” he said through his mirth. “Old family tradition,” he explained and Jaime's confusion cleared, a warm and happy smile dawning on his face. What Selwyn had really gotten them both were keys to the new warehouse. 

“What would have been your gifts if I'd said no?” Brienne asked him, wryly. 

“Probably just the old sock.” 

She snorted and handed out her presents. “Mine next,” she said. Her dad quickly unwrapped the package to reveal the new pair of coveralls she'd gotten him. 

“Exactly what I wanted,” he beamed. 

Jaime started opening his, using his right arm to hold the box in place while he ripped the paper. She was nervous as he did, suddenly regretting making this his gift, but he was already opening the box and he pulled out a headset, looking at her with a curious, confused smile. 

“I'm asking you to be my race engineer,” she explained, the words rushing out of her. “I know it's selfish and silly to ask like this. You don't have to say-”

“Yes,” he said, cutting her off. His whole face was shining, as joyful as a young boy. “I would love to be your race engineer. I was hoping you would ask, but I never thought...it's not what I'm known for.”

“You made me a better driver even during free practice. I can't imagine you not being in the cockpit with me.”

“I'm honored,” he said roughly. “This is the perfect gift, thank you.” Brienne bit her lip and nodded, trying to contain her relief. She'd known since she decided to drive that she wanted only him guiding her, but there had been that quiet, persistent voice that worried he wouldn't, that it was too much to ask him to be down at the track every day just because she needed him. It had been foolish to doubt; he hadn't abandoned her yet. 

“That leaves mine, I guess,” Jaime said, gesturing with his right hand. “They're not much.” 

Selwyn opened his gift and held up the pack of new cleaning cloths for the garage. “They're the good kind!” he said, delighted. Brienne knew he truly was; he'd just been complaining the week before that his were all getting too stained and ripped to be usable much longer. “Thank you, Jaime.” 

“Yours is much less nice,” Jaime said to her, grinning. 

She rolled her eyes and unwrapped a small box. When she opened it, she gasped. There was a sturdy-looking gold chain and hanging from it was a small sword carved out of a stunning blue sapphire. She gently pulled it out of the box and it seemed to absorb the firelight, becoming the color of the sea on fire. It was simple but somehow the most arresting piece of jewelry she'd ever seen. And now the only piece of jewelry she owned, except for a ring of her mother's that her father had set aside for her. She never wore that because she was always hands-deep in grease and engines, and her mother's fingers had been smaller than her own, it wouldn't have fit well anyway. This would fit her perfectly, the necklace sized to suit her. 

“It represents the Warrior,” Jaime explained. “I thought a little extra protection on the track wouldn't go amiss. I had it made for you, look closely.” She did, saw the pommel was shaped like a sun and her initials were carved inside. “I thought with how hard it was just watching Addam drive this might make it a little easier on me,” he said, sheepish. “I guess this is a selfish gift, too.”

“Jaime,” she breathed, taking his hand. “It's beautiful, thank you. I'll wear it every race.” 

Selwyn shifted in his chair and she squeezed Jaime's hand and let him go. “Well,” her father said, “this was a lovely day but it's time for this old man to go to bed.” He stood and kissed her on the top of the head. “Good night, kids. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.” 

“Dad,” Brienne groaned, flushing red, while Jaime chuckled next to her. As Selwyn's heavy steps disappeared upstairs, the air swirled and crackled around them, charged and heavy with the intimacy of being alone in the dark. The necklace still lay in her hand and she held it up again to the light. 

“It's really okay?” Jaime asked quietly. 

“Yes.” She turned to reassure him but the words died in her throat. He was relaxed back on the couch, watching her with hooded eyes, the firelight lapping hungrily at the base of his throat visible in the V of his sweater. Brienne felt like the flames had leapt inside her, a curling desire working its way from her core to her fingertips, which burned with the need to touch him. She did, gently dragging a finger down the hollow of his throat and he shivered. 

_I will not have sex with Jaime on my father's couch_, she promised herself, though not as forcefully as she would have thought. But she did manage to lean away from him without touching him more. 

“We should still wait,” she said, disappointed. It had been so quiet the last week, and with Jaime here it made the rest of the world feel even further away. But this was a blip at best. They had managed to avoid even the most persistent interviewers so far through a little luck and a lot her dad's size. Eventually even the reporters had wanted to be with their families for Crone's Day and it had been peaceful since and likely would be until the new year. But as soon as IAF published their team name and location, she expected it would start up again. 

“We should still wait,” he agreed, his voice thick. “Which feels really fucking dumb right now but I meant what I said before. No regrets next time.” 

“Then we better go to bed. Separately,” she added when his mouth curved into a lazy smile. Brienne stood, his eyes on her as she did. “Thank you for the necklace,” she said, holding it against her chest. “And for agreeing to be my race engineer. I know you're responsible for hiring the crew, but this was important to me.”

“I didn't want to make that decision for you. This season is going to be challenging, I won't lie about that. You need someone you can rely on.” 

“That's you,” she said softly. “That will always be you.”

The heat in his gaze banked a little, replaced by a quiet, almost shocked gratitude. “Good night, Brienne,” he said, and she smiled and clutched the necklace tighter. When she got back to her home, she put it on and when she slept she dreamt of him.

* * *

Brienne hugged Jaime again as they stood in the ferry terminal, the first call for walk-ons reverberating in the small space. It was the next day and he was already leaving. He'd said he could only take a couple days, that there was too much left to be done to spend more time than that on break. She knew it, but somehow she still hadn't believed he would leave so soon. 

“My dad would be happy to have you stay until the new year,” she said, felt him vibrate with laughter in her arms. 

“You've both told me that several times,” he gently reminded her. They were tucked into a corner of the waiting area, holding on tight. The space was fairly empty; most people headed back to the mainland wouldn't leave for another few days or even until the new year. “Now that we have the warehouse there's a lot of work to do. I can't find all the crew we need on Tarth.” 

“You might,” she mumbled into his neck. 

The vibration again, and then she felt him gently kiss her hair. “It will just be two weeks. You and your dad will get the headquarters set up and then I'll be back with the base crew so we can get your car ready for preseason start.” 

“Do you really think you'll find crew?” she asked, the worry that had woken her far too early that morning creeping over her again. Now that each piece became real – the car, the location, the team name – it seemed there were ten new things to worry about. Her current biggest worry was the crew. Tarth was far enough from the mainland that it could be difficult to attract a team, and even more difficult with her as their driver. Jaime might have to pay an obscene amount for the most basic talent. She'd only exchanged brief messages with Pod and Bronn, but the last time they'd seen each other Pod was still working for Sunspear and Bronn was going to retire, finally giving in to Lollys' urging to have him home. _At least I'll have Jaime_, she thought, though she wished her friends could have joined them. 

“I promise I'll take care of it,” Jaime reassured her. “I've done enough crew searches over the years, I know where to go.” 

Another call for walk-on passengers echoed over their heads and Brienne sighed and pulled away. Jaime looked like he was trying to convince himself to go as much as she had when she'd first left Tarth in January. He was wearing a long gray peacoat that brought out the soft green of his eyes and she had so much she wanted to tell him she thought her heart would burst. But the dingy lobby of the ferry terminal, while below them the cars finished driving onto the boat, was not the place. 

“It will be different when you come back,” she said. When he frowned she added, “Not us. But everything else. It doesn't feel real yet, but it'll be real then. We'll have bungalows full of employees and the media will want to come back. I'll have to start actually facing everyone.” 

“We'll get ahead of it,” he promised her. “I'll set something up with Melisandre for the beginning of the year, let the others know they can have their turns and they'll lose them if they show up out of line.” 

“Will that work?”

“We can try it.” She felt her breathing start to go shallow and he cupped her cheek in his palm. “Hey, hey,” he said, gentle. “Two weeks,” he promised. “Three max. You'll be so busy you won't even notice I'm gone until I come back and start bugging you again.” 

“You did promise once to assign an alternate,” she said, relieved when he grinned instead of looking upset at the reminder of their time together before. Sometimes it seemed like their lives were now divided into Before Crash and After Crash and if it weren't for all it had taken to get them to this point, she would have thought everything before existed only as a dream. 

“I will make my annoyance alternate a top priority in the hiring search,” he said solemnly and Brienne laughed and shoved his shoulder. 

“Get on the boat,” she ordered. “Bring me my crew!” 

“Yes, Captain.” He saluted her with his prosthetic hand and she saw his face go soft and yearning even as he turned away. She was certain it was a mirror of her own as she watched him walk onto the ferry back to King's Landing, carrying her dreams and her heart with him.


	25. Evenstar Racing: January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The garage also had her car, and when Brienne flicked on the lights, she took it in with eager eyes. It was the same as it had been yesterday, and a month ago, and even when she and Jaime had driven it back in August, but it looked different to her anyway, more full of potential than it had ever been before. Brienne hurried over, dropping her wet jacket on a chair as she passed and running her hand over the side of the car. 
> 
> “Hello, girl,” she said quietly. “I hope you're ready for this.” 
> 
> The door opened with a loud creak – she mentally made a note to oil the hinges before it ran her nerves ragged during the season – and then Jaime was there and all other thoughts fled. The first thing she noticed was how tired he looked, fresh creases by his eyes and shadows under them, rough stubble across his jaw. He was in jeans and a dark gray hoodie, his hair freshly trimmed but messy from his flight, dark gold from the rain. When he smiled at her, relieved and bright and home, Brienne had never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started posting this fic, I had 6-8 chapters in the hopper at all times, at least four to five of which were always ready to go, but in my excitement to share this story with you all, I started posting twice a week, and not writing fast enough to make up for the balance, which means I am down to being one chapter ahead and I've only read it through two times instead of the usual five or six. SO. What this means is that for the immediate future I'm going back to a once a week posting on the weekends (Friday counts!!) until I get a few chapters ahead again or I finish the fic, whichever comes first. (I'm actually doing this because I really don't want to drop to once every two weeks like I said I'd do when I started out, but I've got a lot of non-fic stuff going on in my life in the next few weeks so that may change.) MOSTLY what I want to assure you is: this fic will get finished, even if updates slow down for a few weeks while I get back on top of things. Thank you for your patience and all your support! <3
> 
> Opening lyrics also from The Local Strangers' "Gasoline."

_Got a head full of hand me downs  
It's tough to tell what's lost, what's found  
And all I've known is all I know  
And I got you here to tell me so  
I got you_

* * *

Brienne was already exhausted when she and her dad parked in front of his garage. The lot next door that he'd purchased only a month ago had been paved and a handful of bungalows set up and their lights glowed warmly, waiting for the new occupants who were due to arrive today. 

It had been three weeks since Jaime had left Tarth and today was the first official day of their preseason. It had taken him longer than they'd hoped to find a crew, but he assured her everyone would be there, ready for a rousing beginning-of-the-season speech that she was not prepared to give. The only good part was that Jaime would be there, too. Though his plane wasn't due to land for another fifteen minutes, he would head straight to the new home of Evenstar Racing once it did, and Brienne's insides shimmered with longing to see him. They talked every day now, usually about work but also about his therapy appointments and her annoyance at her father and whatever else crossed their minds. Even with the distance, they were closer than they had ever been, but she felt like nothing would soothe her steadily increasing anxiety the way being held by him would, feeling him solid and real under her hands. 

“Big day today,” her dad said as they both climbed out of the truck. 

“Yeah.” The bungalows were nondescript, white and tan and boxy. The warehouse in the next lot over that had been converted into a secure, well-stocked garage and engineering space for the car was even more plain except for the thick black letters that spelled out the company name. It didn't even include the logo – that hadn't been designed until a week ago, the name Evenstar with a swooping oval around it that ended in a four-pointed star for the 't.' Preparations for all the buildings had been nonstop and Brienne hadn't had a day off since Jaime had left Tarth. Even with Ned Stark's guidance, the amount of moving pieces to get them just to this point had been almost impossible to keep track of. She hoped with the new crew they could offload some of the work and worry, but she and Jaime were still going to be responsible for most of it. 

And then at some point she had to actually start driving. 

“You okay, short stuff?” 

Brienne conjured up confidence from somewhere she didn't even know. “Yes,” she managed. “Just taking it all in.” 

“Excited to meet the new crew?” he asked as they started walking across the lot to the bungalows. There wasn't much space for official parking and they'd decided to save it for the new employees to make them feel welcome. There was coffee inside and Selwyn had two huge boxes of donuts in his arms as well. 

“Nervous, mostly,” she admitted. “But also excited.” 

“Let Jaime handle whatever you're not comfortable with. Your entire job now is driving.” 

It was, but Jaime was also handling every other part, too, and he'd sounded even more tired than she was when they talked last night. He'd been giving select interviews – starting with Peck, of course – in-between everything else he was doing while in King's Landing, had set up the first television interviews with Melisandre for here later in the week, and she knew the constant questions about Hoat's guilty plea, the crash, and his father were wearing on him. She hoped that once he was here she could provide comfort and cover for him as much as he did for her. At least Tywin had seemed to retreat, not answering any media requests and not reaching out to either of them in retaliation. Brienne didn't trust the quiet from him, but she would take it for now.

They unlocked the bungalow doors and started getting everything set up until the air smelled of sugar and caffeine and it all became very real and unexpectedly normal. For how much fancier the Lannister Corp offices were, they had this same fundamental smell and feel, the same nondescript beige carpet, the same coiled anticipation in the air. They were doing this. _They were doing this_. She felt the first genuine flutter of excitement in her belly. 

“I'm going to go get the garage ready,” Brienne said, wanting some time alone before everyone arrived. “Once they're all here and have some food, have everyone head over for introductions.” 

“Will do, boss,” her father said, grinning.

She shook her head. “And tell them no donuts in the garage!” she threw over her shoulder on the way out. 

It had started to lightly rain, typical for Tarth in January, and she hurried through the gentle drops across the lot. Their garage had lights that had to be manually turned on, a lock that required two keys and no fancy codes to put in, and a weird smell no one had been able to get out, but it also had state-of-the-art HVAC and a row of brand new computer equipment that Argella had helped spec out with extreme glee. 

The garage also had her car, and when Brienne flicked on the lights, she took it in with eager eyes. It was the same as it had been yesterday, and a month ago, and even when she and Jaime had driven it back in August, but it looked different to her anyway, more full of potential than it had ever been before. Brienne hurried over, dropping her wet jacket on a chair as she passed and running her hand over the side of the car. 

“Hello, girl,” she said quietly. “I hope you're ready for this.” 

The door opened with a loud creak – she mentally made a note to oil the hinges before it ran her nerves ragged during the season – and then Jaime was there and all other thoughts fled. The first thing she noticed was how tired he looked, fresh creases by his eyes and shadows under them, rough stubble across his jaw. He was in jeans and a dark gray hoodie, his hair freshly trimmed but messy from his flight, dark gold from the rain. When he smiled at her, relieved and bright and home, Brienne had never seen anything more beautiful in her life. 

“Jaime,” she breathed, and they were pulled towards each other, colliding halfway in an embrace that was so tight it hurt. His right arm was steel around her back, his left hand curled into her hair holding her cheek to his. 

“Were you talking to your car?” he asked and she laughed in his arms, kissed the tender spot below his ear without thinking. Somehow, impossibly, he pulled her tighter against him and she would have in that moment sunk gladly into his skin. 

“I learned from the best,” she said, feeling the rumble of his laughter in her own chest. He kissed her hair and then gently put space between them. When he'd stepped back he looked her over from head to toe while she fidgeted, feeling the blush spread down her neck and chest. Though Jaime wouldn't – she trusted by now he wouldn't – the first voice she always heard was the quiet one saying this time he would laugh at her the way Connington had. But it was getting easier to ignore that voice all the time, and what Jaime did instead was exhale loudly and adjust the slight bulge in his pants with a wry grin. 

“How's she doing?” he asked, pointing at the car with his chin. 

“The same as last time you saw her. We've spent the entire time getting the spaces ready.” 

“I can see that.” He looked around the warehouse, examined the long workbench lined with neatly organized tools. “Your doing, I'm sure.” 

“The tools,” she agreed. “But my dad has been really helpful, especially with the offices. Did you see them?”

“No. I knew you'd be in here so I came here first.” 

She bit back the silly smile that threatened. Gods she had missed him and the easy way he settled in her heart. “You should go see it now, Dad's got donuts and coffee for everyone.” She thought of the crew she soon had to meet and pressed a hand to her nervous stomach. “Did you see other cars in the lot? Do you think they're here?”

“I did and I do.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and smiled at her, a nervous, excited pull of his lips. “Listen, Brienne, before they come over, I-”

The door creaked again and Brienne's heart thudded hard, anticipation and anxiety at war inside her. There were voices chattering, familiar ones, and all her nerves and fear were replaced by a startled delight when Bronn and Podrick ambled through the door. 

“Hi, Chief,” Bronn said, grinning at her. “Though I guess you'll have to call _me_ that now.” Next to him, Pod rolled his eyes but he was smiling so wide she thought his face must hurt. Hers did, for the same reason. 

“What are you doing here?” she gaped, and then she saw who else had come with them. “Willem? _Arya_?” The younger woman looked like she'd just slain a dragon, her face was so filled with pride and pleasure. 

“Well,” Bronn said, “we heard there was this promising new rookie in F1 and we all wanted to work with her.” 

Brienne covered her face with her hands and tried to hold back the tears, the weeks of worry and work making her fragile. She couldn't breathe through the blazing joy that bloomed inside her, so complete and overwhelming her body felt made of it, leaving no room for exhaustion or loneliness or doubt. Jaime put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her close as she pressed her face against his shoulder and choked back a sob. 

“I didn't mean to make you cry, Wrench,” he murmured into her hair and then she was laughing, too, and the others were there and she was hugging them hard: Bronn, who gruffly wrapped her up with both arms; Podrick who made her squeak he gripped her so tightly; Arya, who was so much shorter than her they both came away snickering. There were other faces behind them, some men she knew from Jaime's crew and women she didn't know from anywhere, but they were all beaming at her, eager and interested. Her team. 

Hovering behind all of them was the imposing form of Sandor Clegane. Brienne marched over to him and hesitated. There was a fifty percent chance he'd kill her if she hugged him, too. 

“Lannister mentioned you needed someone to drive the buses and transport trucks once you got to the mainland, that there's some shuttling work to be done here.” 

“I thought you didn't like F1?” she asked, peering at him. 

“I don't. I like you,” he grumbled, sounding angry for having to say it out loud. 

“Sandor-”

“Don't go getting all,” he waved a meaty hand threateningly in front of him. “I'm here for the job.” 

“Then you're hired,” she said, smiling. 

He rolled his eyes. “For fuck's sake.” But he couldn't quite hide the upward twist of his scarred face. 

“I thought you were with Sunspear?” Brienne said, turning to Pod. 

Podrick shrugged gamely. “I-I-I wanted t-to be here.” 

“And retirement?” she asked Bronn. 

“Overrated. Besides,” he gestured to an older woman hiding a little in the back. “Lollys thought she could come work, too. You'll need a good receptionist and she's the best.” Brienne covered her mouth, afraid she'd burst into fresh tears, but Bronn looked so worried she would that Brienne held them back. 

“We're happy to have you,” Brienne managed, and Lollys smiled, relieved. 

“My internship was done,” Arya jumped in, “and Lannister offered me a lead engineer job before my own family could get their heads on straight. I would've taken this one anyway, but good on him for recognizing greatness and stealing it away from the competition.” 

“My one strength,” Jaime said, grinning. 

“You're all staying here on Tarth? For the whole year?” 

“Lannister helped us find places. Not a lot of choice so we've got some unexpected roommate situations,” Bronn said and Pod and Willem and Sandor all shared a look that made Brienne have to stifle a truly obnoxious laugh, “but we're all settled and ready to work.” 

Brienne shook her head, looked around again at the faces that turned her way with no hint of judgment or scorn or disbelief. They had all chosen to be way out here – some of them leaving behind perfectly good positions with teams that could win – and they'd chosen it knowing they were going to work with her. She felt the combined weight and lightness of it balanced in her heart, the knife's edge of her responsibility and joy. Brienne glanced at Jaime and he nodded encouragingly; the team was hers to command. “Well,” she said, “then let's get started.”

* * *

That wasn't the last of the people Brienne already knew coming to their aid. Sansa Stark showed up the following afternoon to talk jumpsuit designs and colors. She cooed over the blue of Brienne's car, took lots of pictures, and spent hours taking measurements for everyone on the team. The day after that, Brienne's inter-office intercom buzzed and she answered on speaker, “Yes?”

“Brienne,” Lollys said, “there's a very handsome man here eager to see you.” 

Brienne flushed and glanced over at Jaime, who was working at the other desk in their shared office. The space worked for the most part, as long as she didn't spend too much time looking at Jaime. Fortunately they were both so busy that it wasn't often they were in the room together alone. Jaime raised one eyebrow curiously now. “Secret suitor?” he mouthed and she felt her blush deepen. 

“What's his name?” she asked Lollys. 

“Addam Marbrand. He told me to announce him the other way in case Jaime was there.” Jaime laughed loudly and stood. 

“Lollys, please remind him he only has this job by my good graces,” Jaime said, smiling. He gestured for Brienne to follow and they crossed the wet asphalt to greet Addam in the front bungalow that acted as Evenstar Racing's reception. 

“Brienne,” Addam said, ignoring Jaime when they stepped inside. He bowed to her and bent over her hand, kissing the knuckles like a charming gentleman of old. “A pleasure to see you again, my lady.” 

Jaime groaned and shoved his shoulder while she and Addam grinned at each other. “Not that it's not good to see you, but what are you doing here? You said you gave him a job?” she asked Jaime. 

“A decision I'm already regretting,” Jaime grumbled. 

“He's asked me to help train you for racing. A glorified driving instructor,” he said without rancor. 

“Now that I'm your race engineer _and_ team principal, I realized I was going to be too busy with everything else to appropriately help with your training, too,” Jaime explained. “With Addam retired, I thought of him right away. He's got a great grasp of the critical mechanics and he can share some of the nuances of driving at this level so you don't have to learn on the track.” 

“Plus I'm a more patient teacher than some people,” Addam said and Jaime glared at him. 

“Jaime's been a huge help to me,” Brienne said, “but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can learn from you, too.” 

Addam's glance shifted to Jaime and they shared a look that could only come from long years of friendship. Brienne wondered how much Addam knew about them. The employees of Evenstar Racing seemed to be on a spectrum: some, like Sandor and Bronn, knew everything; others like Podrick and Arya and Lollys had strong suspicions and tended to watch the two of them together like they were waiting for Jaime and Brienne to rip each other's clothes off in the middle of the garage. The rest were seemingly too busy working to care, and for that Brienne was extremely grateful. 

“We've got a desk for you,” Jaime said, clapping Addam on the shoulder. “Then we can talk about scheduling and what other grunt work we can put you to.” 

“I'm at your service,” Addam said, directing it to Brienne again, and this time Jaime's mouth tightened in a way that suggested he was finding Addam's flirtations genuinely annoying. 

That evening when everyone but she and Jaime had left, Brienne pushed back from her desk and rubbed her bleary eyes and caught him watching her. “Thanks for hiring Addam,” she said. “It'll be helpful to have his expertise.” 

“Mm,” Jaime grunted, frowning at his laptop. 

“He's a sweet guy,” she prodded Jaime a little. 

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You think so?”

“He hasn't compared me to a tool once.”

Jaime shut his laptop and folded his arms over his chest. “Sounds boring.”

“Does he know about us?”

“He suspects, but I haven't told him everything. He was there for me, though,” he continued, his tone softening, “that first race after...after.” 

After she'd broken his heart. Brienne wanted to walk over there and pour herself into his lap, let them forget about how much her decision had hurt them both, but Jaime sighed and said, “We have our first interview in two days, with Melisandre for her WSN Meet the Team segment.” It was a gentle reminder of the reason the distance remained between them, as imposing as the Wall of myth. 

“She's coming here, isn't she?”

“Yes. She jumped at the chance to be the first one to show off our offices.” 

“Maybe we should have Addam do that. He could charm her into being kinder, I bet.”

“Brienne,” Jaime said and he sounded sick, her name dragged from his lips, “I hope...I know you don't want to make things more difficult but I hope you'll wait for us.” He couldn't even look at her and she regretted teasing him even a little about Addam. She had not fully appreciated how deeply what she'd done had wounded his surprisingly tender heart, even with the reasons she had done it. From the beginning she had thought he was the hardened warrior and she the soft-hearted maiden, but all this time they had each been both. 

The space between them filled with every moment from January to now and Brienne curled her fingers on her desktop. “I'll wait, of course I'll wait,” she promised him quiet and fierce. “It's my doing, I wouldn't keep us apart just to never get started at all.” 

“I'm not-” he waved his stump around; he'd taken to removing his prosthetic at night when the day was nearly done and his arm ached. “And Addam is-”

“A nice guy,” she cut in. “And not the man I want.” 

His eyes fluttered closed, lashes dark against his unusually pale cheeks. He was the picture of exhaustion and she did get up then, holding his wondering gaze as she came near, standing by his side. She ran her fingers through his already tousled hair and he leaned into her touch. 

“You should take tomorrow off,” she said quietly. 

“There's too much to do.”

“It'll keep. You need some rest. You want to be at your best for the interview and one of us needs to look good,” she said, aiming for joking and not quite hitting it. 

“You look good,” he said, staring up at her, and she believed him. He nuzzled his face into her belly and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him there. 

His hair was so soft in her hands and she wrapped her fingers in it, tugged his head back to meet her stare. Jaime's pupils were wide, hungry; his hand was gripped tight on her hip, his stump pressing soft into her thigh. 

“You should go home,” he rasped, though his fingers didn't loosen and hers didn't either. 

“I know,” she whispered. She didn't want to, she had never wanted anything less than leaving him here, but it was because of her they were waiting and she wouldn't make him be the strong one on top of everything else. Brienne ran her fingers through his hair one last time and then let him go, stepping out of his reach on legs weak with need. “Take tomorrow off,” she ordered, not sure if it was just for him that she asked it. “I'll see you Friday.” 

That night when she was alone in bed she pictured Jaime as she'd left him in their office: hair messy from her hands, his cheeks flushed, his cock swollen in the loose line of his slacks. She touched herself, unsurprised to find she was already wet, her body yearning for release. But even though she cried out as she came hard around her own fingers, there was still an emptiness left behind that had nothing to do with sex.

* * *

Jaime texted her Thursday that he was taking her advice and while it was easier to show up knowing she wouldn't have to fight her own heart all day, she found odd spaces where he was missing, like when she went for her third cup of coffee and there was no one to hand her the sugar she always forgot, or after Bronn made some comment about tire selection and she had no one to roll her eyes with. She was also surprised at the number of people who stopped her asking where Jaime was, wanting to be sure he was all right. Not all of them were a surprise: when she told Podrick and Bronn she'd ordered Jaime to take the day off Bronn had nodded in approval. 

“He looks like shit,” Bronn had said. “Regular person shit, even, not Lannister shit.” 

Arya came into the office around lunch and stared at Jaime's empty desk and said, “Well where the fuck is he then?” 

“What?” Brienne asked, blinking. She'd been going over tracks at Addam's request in prep for a run-through on the simulator Jaime had managed to purchase a few days earlier. 

“Lannister, I haven't seen him anywhere today.” 

“He's taking the day off, he needs a break.” 

“How'd you convince him of that? I figured he'd just drop dead first.” 

“Interview tomorrow, I told him he needed his beauty rest,” she said, and though her tone was joking she felt a knot in her stomach. She was worried that Tywin's shadow was driving him too hard, even though whether they would take Lannister Corp down or not ultimately relied on her. 

“You gonna go home early, too?” Arya asked, sitting down in the one guest chair they could fit in the space. 

“No, I've got a packed schedule today.”

Arya picked up Jaime's weird-looking cat mug and stared at the snub-nosed face, wrinkling her own nose like she was trying to match it. Instead of lollipops Jaime kept it full of pens now, his smoking habit finally broken. “When's the last day off you had?” Arya asked casually. 

Brienne straightened and gave her a dry look. “I know what you're doing, and it's not the same.”

“No? Didn't you make Lannister take the day off because he's working too hard?”

“Yes, but I'm fine. Besides I took...” she hesitated, and then shrugged. “Well I was off on Crone's Day for sure.” 

“That was almost four weeks ago.” 

“Jaime's got the harder job tomorrow at the interview,” Brienne explained. “He needs the extra rest to prepare for it.” 

“You're right, I'm sure it'll be simple for you, being the first woman driver in F1 in decades and all. Melisandre, that little fluffball of a reporter, she won't have any interest in talking to you when Jaime Lannister is right there.” 

“You've been spending too much time with Bronn,” Brienne muttered, and Arya flashed her a bright smile. 

“Nah, I've always been like this, you can ask my dad. But I do like him.” 

As though she'd summoned him, Bronn poked his head in the office. “There you are,” he said to Arya. “Are you hiding from me?”

“Why would I hide from you? You're the least scary person here.”

“I'm scarier than Podrick,” Bronn protested and Brienne snickered quietly when Arya looked doubtful. 

“What do you want anyway?” Arya asked. 

“Your wing diagrams are giving me an ulcer. We'll never get those built out in time for preseason.”

“Yes we will.” She set the mug down and stood, stretching her slim frame. “I've got Ygritte on it, she'll get it done.” 

Brienne tried to recall which woman that was, remembered she had bright red hair and as dirty a mouth as Bronn. She and one of the other new women, Asha Greyjoy, seemed to be getting on fabulously any time Brienne was in the garage. It had been very strange that first day to let someone other than herself or her dad touch her car, to hand over the care of it to Bronn the same way Jaime had given her control of his. At least she knew and trusted Bronn already; Brienne had only realized in that moment what a leap of faith Jaime had taken by bringing her on. 

She didn't know or trust most of the engineering and mechanic crew yet, but they were all there by recommendation of someone she did trust, and that would have to carry them all through until they could build the same rapport she'd had with Jaime's team. In the meantime, she was spending less time in the garage than she'd thought, partly because she had so much else to do, but partly because she was still having trouble watching other people taking her car apart in order to make it better, like watching a doctor perform surgery on a loved one. 

Bronn huffed, disbelieving. “Well I still want to go over it. We can't leave Chief up shit creek because you've overestimated your team. We don't have Direwolf capabilities here.” Bronn glanced at Brienne. “No offense.”

“It's the truth,” Brienne said. “We're operating at a disadvantage right from the get-go. But I trust Arya and if Arya trusts her team, then that's good enough for me.” 

Arya's normally excellent poker face slipped a little and she looked gratefully at Brienne. “I do trust them. The wing is halfway there already, the changes won't be as much as you think. Come on,” she told Bronn, “I'll walk you through it.” 

It was quiet in the office after the door closed behind them, and she wished Jaime was there so they could talk about what had just happened. He was her sounding board and her commiserator and her support; a partner in every sense of the word except the one that had burned them before, the one that the world would judge most harshly. 

There was a knock on the door and Brienne glanced at her clock. “Come in,” she said, and Addam entered as expected. 

“Ready to meet?” he asked. 

“I've only gotten through Gulltown.”

“That's okay, we're just going to focus on Sunspear today.” He looked at Jaime's empty desk. “He really stayed home today, huh?”

“Everyone's so surprised.” 

“You didn't see him in King's Landing,” Addam said. “I didn't see him much either, but every time I did it was like he was trying to be six places at once. He's been happier here, I can tell that even in just the day I've been around.” Addam sat in the chair Arya had vacated and steepled his fingers. “I suspect that's because you're here.” 

Brienne felt her cheeks go red and she shrugged. “We can certainly share the work better this way.”

“That's not what I meant.” 

“There's nothing going on,” she said, which was technically true, even if only barely. 

“Really?” 

“I mean we're not...what has Jaime told you?”

“About you? A symphony of praise and adoration. About his relationship with you? Silence.” 

Brienne stared down at her hands, drew a circle on her palm with a nervous finger. “What would you think if there _was_ something more going on?”

“I'd think it was about time.”

She looked up and Addam was smiling genially. “You wouldn't think it was a mistake? Or a joke?”

“A joke? Jaime's reputation isn't great but people think of him very differently after last year,” Addam said, frowning. 

“Not because of him, because of me. Because I'm...like I am.” 

“Brienne,” Addam sighed. “We don't know each other all that well, but I hope you will allow me some unvarnished honesty?”

“Of course.”

“Whatever you seem to think people are going to say about you, they'll say whether you're with Jaime or not. You're a woman jumping feet first into a man's sport. You're big and tall and strong and you don't care about what you're wearing nearly as much as you care that your team is being taken care of. What part of that gets worse if you and Jaime are an item?”

“That the only reason I got this chance was because we were sleeping together. That Jaime must be blind or desperate to be with me,” she said softly. That one, she knew, was going to hurt the most, because there was still that tiny part of her that wondered if it were true. 

“The only people who think that last one are those who haven't seen the two of you together. You might not officially be a couple, but Jaime's heart sure thinks you are. And yours, if I may say, seems to feel the same.” She nodded a little. “As for the other,” Addam shrugged. “You don't think people aren't saying that now?”

“If we're together it will just make them seem right.” 

“Only until you hit the track, and then you'll show them why you really got this chance. Drivers respect driving, Brienne. You saw that with Jaime this season, and how Robb responded at the end. Jaime wasn't that much less of a dick to him in the cool down room than he'd ever been, but he was driving better, he was winning clean. The drivers that matter? They respect that, and fuck everybody else. Listen,” Addam said, sighing. “I'm not trying to force you into anything you don't want. You seem to have your reasons for whatever is keeping you separated. But every time I see Jaime alone and every time I see Jaime with you, he's a different man. If you feel even half as much for him as he feels for you, I think you should reconsider your reasons for being apart.” 

“Even if all the rest of that is true, the media would drag us through the mud, it would be ugly and distracting. I need to focus.” 

“How well are you focusing now?” Addam asked gently. Brienne stared hard at her desk. “We should be talking about Sunspear,” he went on. “Not love lives.” 

“Sorry,” she mumbled. 

Addam lifted one shoulder. “Let's go check out the simulator. See how well you can shut all this away when you have wheels on the road, even virtual ones.” 

They worked on her technique for two hours, and although she noticed a considerable improvement with every lap, Addam having to remind her less and less about when the optimal braking point was and which gear she should be in for which section, she couldn't deny that Jaime hovered just on the edge of her thoughts the entire time.

* * *

Sandor dropped Jaime, Willem, and Podrick off at the offices early on Friday and Jaime escaped from the roommates' bickering as quickly as he could. The three men were fine separately, but together they seemed to have a perfectly calamitous mix of traits that made living together unbearable. 

“It was your turn to do dishes,” Willem grumbled to Podrick as they escaped the sedan with Jaime. 

“N-n-no,” Pod protested. “It w-was the Hound's!”

Sandor unfolded himself from the car and glared at both of them. “I did them night before last when you two numbnuts fell asleep watching that terrible movie.” 

Willem gasped in offense and Jaime hurried for the bungalow that acted as their reception before he had to listen to the other man's full-throated defense of something that was assuredly terrible. The only bad thing Willem had never defended was his brother. It was the reason Jaime had hired him for Brienne's crew; when his brother had done something horrible Willem had chosen his morals over his family and that was a man that could be trusted with Brienne's life. Which essentially was what Jaime had kept in mind with each person he hired: did he trust that if Tywin tried to turn this person against them, they would hold their ground and stand with Brienne? It had made finding crew intensely difficult, but Jaime felt good about those that would be most closely attached to the car, and the cadre of engineers that he'd mostly left in Arya's hands to source weren't allowed unsupervised contact anyway. It was the best Jaime could do, though he still woke up some nights in a cold sweat, having dreamed of Brienne's car flipping end over end the same way Aerys' had. 

Every time he woke up from those dreams he grabbed his phone and read through the last messages she'd sent him, no matter how inconsequential they were. They reminded him that the fears weren't real, that she was safe from his father, and that Jaime could still protect her. His missing hand always ached in those moments, a persistent reminder that there were few lengths his father wouldn't go to, that Jaime would have to be vigilant all season. He suspected Tywin's lack of any response so far – even his persistent “no comment” to every inquiry about Brienne and Evenstar Racing, the constructor Lannister Corp had supposedly charitably funded – was mostly because he didn't realize the secondary purpose behind Brienne's entry to the field. Surely if he'd known their intentions, he would have already tried to disrupt them. 

Jaime intended to hold onto that secret as long as he could, which meant he'd have to be careful around Melisandre today. The day off _had_ done him good; he'd wanted to open his laptop and catch up on emails, but when he didn't wake up until after nine am without an alarm and he still felt exhausted, he decided to honor the intent of the day. He'd done little of value in the small apartment he was renting for the year, mostly watching bad movies on cable and napping on the couch, and he felt refreshed and eager to be back at work, which he hadn't felt since he'd left Tarth after Crone's Day. 

“Good morning, Jaime,” Lollys said cheerfully when he entered, her brown eyes alight. She had a warm, round face, and she seemed to be in an unrelentingly good mood at all times. She would have to be, to have been married to Bronn all those years. “Melisandre's team called and they're just a few minutes out. I let Brienne know, too.” 

The door opened again and Brienne stepped in and Jaime's heart beat double, the way it did every time he saw her after even the shortest of time away, like his love was a fresh discovery. She smiled when she saw him, a shy, sweet curl of her lips that he'd never seen her give anyone else. It didn't help his heart slow at all. 

“You look better,” she said in greeting. 

“You look incredible,” he said, and she flushed red. She did, though, in a fitted deep blue men's button-up shirt and loose black suit pants that flowed down her endless legs. Brienne even had a pair of matching blue low-heeled shoes that he could see the pale white of the top of her feet in. 

“Sansa picked it out for me,” she said. “She agreed to help me with my style this season since I'll be in the spotlight more.” 

“Well gods bless Sansa,” he murmured before realizing Lollys was staring at them with raised eyebrows and a knowing smile. Jaime found a casual grin and shrugged. “At least you're not wearing the blue jumpsuit for a third time.”

She snorted and was about to retort when the door opened again and Melisandre entered and she instead turned a polite smile to the journalist. “Melisandre, welcome to Evenstar Racing.” 

“Thank you,” Melisandre said, shaking her hand and then turning to Jaime and shaking his, too. “And thank you for letting me be the first interview.” 

“Second,” Jaime reminded her. “She did that online piece with Peck.”

“Ah, yes, Peckledon. He's getting quite a few interesting interviews these days. I suppose that's what happens when you've got friends in high places.” 

“Peck did an incredible amount of research to break the news about the gambling ring within F1,” Jaime bristled. “People respect the work.”

“I'd love to talk to you about that more, if you hadn't explicitly made it a forbidden topic today.”

“It doesn't have anything to do with Brienne and the team, why would we talk about it?”

Melisandre smiled, but it wasn't friendly. “It's not nice to start an interview with a lie, Jaime. Lannister Corp just happened to donate their LST payment in its entirety to a competitor? And now refuses to talk about it?” 

“My father's new year's resolution was to be more humble,” Jaime said airily. “Besides, the publicity from helping fund one of the first viable women drivers in decades is its own reward.”

“Why isn't she driving on his team, then? He's got a free spot with you gone.” She glanced at Jaime's prosthetic and he resisted hiding it behind his back. 

“A mild punishment for not vetting their employees better, as IAF has explained multiple times already.” IAF had gone out of their way to hide the extent of his family's role in both the gambling ring and the crash, laying the gambling at Martyn's feet as a lone actor, and Vargo Hoat as his hired gun sent to ruin Jaime's chances. Lannister Corp's bankruptcy, Tywin's role, those were still closely-guarded secrets and the other reason Tywin may not have struck against them yet. They were in a carefully balanced detente, Jaime and Brienne holding information that could ruin Lannister Corp, Tywin holding the power to bring down Evenstar Racing. Jaime just hoped his father's pride and anger held out for the season. 

Melisandre didn't look convinced but she let it drop. “Why don't you take me on a tour of your spaces and we can figure out where to do the interview.” 

In the end they decided to do it in the garage, which had enough space for the lighting, camera crew, Brienne, Jaime, and Melisandre, and also was admittedly the nicest part of their small campus. The most money had gone into the warehouse to ready it for the work that needed to happen, and although the engineers and mechanics grumbled about the break they were going to have to take thanks to needing to cover all the computer screens and the car, they didn't grumble as loudly when Brienne told them to take the day off for an early weekend. Even with the free day, many of them hung around crowded into a corner of the garage to watch as Melisandre kicked off the interview. 

“Welcome to WSN's Meet the Team, I'm Melisandre van Houten and I have the privilege of being the first reporter to sit down for an onscreen interview with the brand new Formula 1 constructor team, Evenstar Racing. Joining me are Jaime Lannister, former Formula 1 driver and Evenstar Racing's Team Principal and race engineer for my other guest, Brienne Tarth.” She turned to look at them both. “Thank you both for sitting down with me today, we have a lot to talk about. Brienne,” she started, “you are the first woman driver even attempting to qualify in twenty-five years, and a woman hasn't actually been on the track at race time for forty years. How are you feeling?”

“Excited,” Brienne said, her hands folded together on her lap. “It's a tremendous opportunity and I'm anxious to get out on the track for the first qualifying session.” 

“You're in this position through a truly remarkable set of circumstances. First hired as a Chief Mechanic by Jaime Lannister, then promoted to his Race Engineer, and also allowed to do test driving for the team. We talked a bit last year when we did this for Lannister Corp about why Jaime picked you to be his mechanic, but can you talk about your journey from that point to now?”

Brienne glanced at him and he nodded a little, encouraging her. He knew she could do it and he wanted her to get comfortable with telling her story; it was something they'd practiced in anticipation of her needing to tell it over and over again through the season. He saw her take a breath and then she laid it out as they'd rehearsed. 

“As you remember, Lancel got very sick the first day of preseason testing and he wasn't able to do his runs and we needed the information. Lannister Corp is notorious for not using test drivers and I had some test driving experience and so I was lucky to be in a position to help everyone out. Fortunately I didn't crash the car and they allowed me to continue testing off and on through the season.” 

“It helped us,” Jaime jumped in. “Her being able to have that direct knowledge of the vehicle allowed her to give me better advice as my race engineer.” 

Brienne smiled a little. “It was helpful even as Chief Mechanic, to actually feel how the adjustments affected the car. It gave me a much more visceral sense of what was and wasn't working and why.” 

“But you didn't stay Chief Mechanic,” Melisandre cut in. 

“No, Jaime needed a race engineer.” 

“Because no one else would work with him.” Melisandre directed that one to Jaime and the pain of it felt dulled with time and everything else he'd been through since then. 

“Frankly I'm surprised she worked with me,” Jaime said, grinning a little. “I suppose she still didn't know me well enough by then to know what an incredible pain in the ass I'd be.” 

“Is that why you didn't make Bronn Blackwater your race engineer?”

He shook his head. “I picked Brienne because I knew she'd be great at it. She has a tremendous tactical sense of how to approach a race, she's an incredibly hard worker, and she always keeps a calm head in the middle of chaos. I think my season proved my assessment of her correct, and those skills will help her as a driver this season.” 

Jaime knew she was probably blushing a little at his praise, but he didn't risk looking at her to see. Melisandre watched him with a considering stare. “How was the decision made to set up a brand new constructor team for Brienne to race?”

He glanced at Brienne and she nodded, indicating he should answer. “Petyr Baelish and the IAF have been interested for awhile in expanding Formula 1 to all sorts of drivers,” he lied smoothly. “With Lannister Corp being unable to run a second driver this year due to the gambling scandal-” he smirked internally, knowing Petyr would have a fit that he'd used that word when they'd wanted him to call it an incident instead – “there was space but teams can only field two drivers a season at most. We were in the position that Brienne already had an F1-ready car and I had money and the will to help her achieve this.” 

“Why her, though?” Melisandre pressed and Jaime straightened in his chair. 

“Why not?” he asked seriously, but he saw the brief annoyed frown on her face before she turned her question to Brienne. 

“What do you think you bring that other women don't?”

“I-” Brienne started and then stopped, uncertainty all over her face. “Luck, mostly,” she said. “Being in the right place at the right time.”

“You don't think you have exceptional skills?”

“I think I am very good at some things and not as good at others, just like anyone, man or woman.”

“I think you're underselling yourself,” Jaime cut in unable to keep quiet another second. “I couldn't have picked just any woman with mechanic experience and still ended up here.” He searched her eyes, needing to see her belief in the deep-sea blue. “You're a remarkable person, Brienne.” 

Her cheeks went pink and then swiftly red and she looked down at her hands. “Well you have to think that, you're my race engineer,” she said lightly. When she looked up again she refused to meet his gaze, staring straight at Melisandre. “I think what I do bring is Formula 1 experience. I've been in the pit, I've been in the garages, I've even been behind the wheel. What I would love is if my work opens up the door to other women to get their chance. Imagine if the field became even a quarter women someday, let alone half.”

“Or all?” Melisandre asked. 

“Even better,” Brienne said, smiling a little. 

“Then it would just be a women's league, wouldn't it?”

Jaime was glad he was watching Brienne when Melisandre asked that, because he got to see the transformation of Brienne's features from polite and humble to the stubborn warrior woman he loved so much. “_Just_ a woman's league?” she asked, offense thick in her tone. “It's still racing. It's still the same sport, only the driver composition would be different. You don't call the league now _just_ a men's league, do you?” She didn't wait for Melisandre to answer. “Why do people think that because women are doing it it somehow becomes less important or exciting than when men do it? We are still competing at the highest level of our sport, pressing our bodies to their limits and beyond. The rules are the same, the skills required are the same. And yet when it's women doing it, it's _just_ the women's league. Seems like a double-standard to me. You're in a position to change that double-standard and yet you feed into it. I'm disappointed you'd even ask the question. ” 

Melisandre sat back in her chair, clearly thrown off, and Jaime heard Arya, Ygritte, and the others whooping off-camera. 

“Perhaps we should take a quick break,” Melisandre said, motioning to her producer and standing quickly. 

Brienne bit down on her lip and looked nervous, as though she'd done something she shouldn't, and Jaime glanced at Melisandre's disappearing back before briefly reaching out to brush Brienne's hand. “That was the perfect answer,” he assured her just before Arya came bounding up. 

“Holy fuck!” Arya said gleefully, holding up her hand for a high-five. “Do you know how long I've wanted someone to say that?”

Brienne laughed and high-fived her, her palm a solid wall absorbing Arya's ferocious slap. “We'll be lucky if she doesn't cut the whole thing.” 

“At least you said it. Now maybe she'll stop asking those types of questions in the future.” 

“Every little bit helps, I suppose.” Brienne glanced at Jaime. “Thank you for what you said,” she murmured. “I appreciate you defending me.” 

Jaime huffed. “It was only the truth,” he insisted, and she looked so startled he wondered how she couldn't see all that she truly was even now. For a woman who took up so much physical space with her marvelous body, she still seemed to think she deserved so little of it. He wished he could take her hands, kiss her hard and somehow let his feelings for her convince her of the truth. But all he could do was stare desperately and try to will his confidence and belief her way, hope that it all translated through his eyes. Her cheeks warmed again and there was the smile he thought of as his, and he hoped it had worked. 

Bronn wandered over, tapping him on the shoulder and leaning closer to his ear. “If you're trying to convince people you're not in love with her, you're doing a shit job,” he whispered.

Jaime glanced at Brienne but she was engaged with Ygritte and Asha now. “I don't care if people think that,” Jaime said softly. “They just have to know she deserves to be here regardless of how I feel.” 

“Including her,” Bronn said. 

Jaime watched her chatting with the women, and he nodded. “Especially her. Everyone will see once she's on the track. That will change everything.” 

When Melisandre returned she was composed and smiling again, and the rest of the interview followed along more familiar lines, her questions hovering into standard territory for any new driver – what are you most excited about? Who do you most want to race against? Have you chosen your number yet? – with a few that were tailored for Brienne as a woman but much less antagonizing. Jaime sat quietly through most of it, happy to watch her handle the questions with growing ease, to slowly unfold and reveal a little more of the intelligence and humor he'd become familiar with during their many months side-by-side. By the end of the season, he was certain everyone would love her almost as much as he did, or at least be on their way. 

“For our final question,” Melisandre said, “what would you say to a young woman who may be watching this interview, hoping to someday be in Formula 1 herself, whether as a mechanic, an engineer, or a driver?” 

Brienne pursed her lips, considering the question seriously in silence for a few seconds. Jaime glanced at the small crowd of their team, saw they were all intent and quiet as they waited. 

“I would say,” she started, her voice tentative, “that the road may often be difficult, even with people who have started clearing it ahead of you. And sometimes you will want to give up or you will want to cry or scream or sit in a dark room and watch television for twenty hours straight.” Melisandre chuckled. “Those feelings are okay, but the one thing you must never do is quit. If you want it bad enough, it can be yours, you just have to believe in yourself and,” Brienne's eyes flickered towards Jaime, so briefly he would have missed it if he hadn't been watching her so intently, “find at least one person who believes in you even more for those times when you can't do it on your own. One person can change your life.” 

“Wonderful,” Melisandre said, smiling happily. “Thank you both for your time, and I sincerely wish you the best this season. I look forward to watching you.” Jaime believed her that time, and it helped him manage a friendly smile through the admiration and love surging through him like a warm river. 

The director cut the cameras and he and Brienne shook Melisandre's hand before Bronn and Addam came over, directing her and the rest of the team away so Jaime and Brienne could be alone in the crowd for a moment. From across the smallest, impossible distance, he leaned towards her. 

“I mean it,” she said softly before he could speak. “I see all the things you do for me, Jaime. The things I'm not even sure you're aware of, because they come so naturally to you. I couldn't do this without you.”

“You could.”

“No,” she said, her mouth curving, gentle and sure. “I wouldn't have even considered it possible. You make me believe in impossible things, Jaime Lannister.” 

Unable to resist, to stand so near and not touch her at all, Jaime took Brienne's hand in his and her fingers linked eagerly with his own and their palms pressed hard against each other as they squeezed. Addam coughed a few steps away and Jaime let her go, but he felt her hand in his, her words in his heart, as much as any phantom movement of his missing hand, twice as real and not painful at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any one chapter fully embodies my own personal wish fulfillment, it is this one.


	26. February (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I've been thinking a lot about us,” she said, matching his softness with her own. “About what it would mean if we stopped waiting.” 
> 
> He let out a slow, shuddering breath. “That's a step I can't come back from.”
> 
> “I know. But what if I've been worried about nothing this whole time?”
> 
> Jaime shook his head. “It only feels like nothing because no one suspects. Don't make up your mind until after the first race. Gossip sites aren't the same as being there in person with drivers and engineers and cameras in your face, with the stress from being on the track.” 
> 
> Brienne sighed and nodded. “After Sunspear,” she agreed, unconvinced, and the rain dripping on her skin felt like his fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would not exist without BrynnMcK, the light in my darkest writer moments. <3

The WSN interview was scheduled to air the first Sunday in February, last in the series, though parts of it were teased through every other team's interviews until the fever pitch of anticipation was so high that Argella reported watch parties were being scheduled through social media. Calls and requests to talk with other reporters came in daily, but Jaime's threat that if anyone showed up onsite they wouldn't get any time seemed to be holding them off, and in the agreement they made with Melisandre, other interviews were being scheduled for after the WSN piece. 

It worked to their benefit, Brienne knew, buying them space and focus to get done as much of the work they needed as possible. They weren't just building a car, they were building a company, and Selwyn slowly got more and more involved just out of necessity, her uncle Endrew roped in to work full-time at her father's garage. Even Goodwin joined the effort, becoming their official legal review team of one. She and Jaime had talked about getting Tyrion involved, but he'd insisted on staying at Lannister Corp as a friendly insider. 

A new employee would show up every day it seemed, always with a connection to someone already on the team. Jojen Reed came to be their accountant in late January, recommended by Arya's brother, Bran; and Shireen Baratheon showed up on their doorstep shortly after thanks to a direct recommendation by Renly, nervous but hopeful and ready to be in charge of scheduling travel. The team was on the whole quite young, Brienne couldn't help noticing as she walked through rain or sun each day to get to her office and the training area and the garage. The youthful energy kept spirits high and meant most people were ready and willing to work the long hours, but sometimes it made her feel even older than Jaime. She told him that when they were sitting in the office with Addam, who had come in to discuss the track at Myr. 

“What do you mean even older than me?” Jaime asked, squinting at her. “I'm not old.” 

Brienne ignored Addam's derisive snort. “You're not old, but you're older than me.”

“Not _that_ much older,” he protested. 

“Nine years,” she said.

"Your birthday was last month. It's only eight now,” he said triumphantly.

He had been in King's Landing still but he'd called her and sung 'happy birthday' over the phone and the next day a limited edition Direwolf racing poster had arrived signed by Brandon Stark himself. Brienne had hung it up next to her dad's brag board. 

“Don't worry, in July it will be nine again,” Addam said cheerfully and Jaime threw a pen at him, the angle all wrong with his left hand so it bounced pitifully off of Addam's knee. 

“All I'm saying,” Brienne said, trying to rope the conversation back in, “is that so many of our employees are under twenty-five and I've never really been a go out and party type even when _I_ was under twenty-five. I feel awkward when I'm around them. I don't know how to bond.”

“You're the driver, you shouldn't be out partying anyway,” Addam said. 

“When did that ever stop you?” Jaime asked. 

“We're not talking about me,” Addam said primly and Brienne snickered.

“You don't have to bond with all of them,” Jaime went on. “Why don't you take the pit crew out to House of Fish some night? A team dinner could do some good.” 

“We should do a company dinner,” Brienne mused. “Invite everybody. You're finished hiring people aren't you?”

“I think so. I've got everyone critical from the list we made with Ned, though with no backups. If a pit crew member gets sick on race day they either have to work through it or we'll put Addam in their place.” 

“I stand ready to assist you, my lady liege,” he said, bowing a little towards Brienne from his seat. Ever since Addam had arrived he'd treated her like a chivalrous knight whenever they weren't actively training, and though she knew he mostly did it to irritate Jaime, she still secretly enjoyed it so she let it slide. 

“Why don't we have the company dinner and watch the WSN interview all together this week?” Jaime asked, pointedly ignoring Addam. 

She grimaced. “I was hoping to have a much smaller viewing party at my dad's instead. Besides, we have to give House of Fish time to plan for a group that big. Let's have a team dinner after we get back from winter testing, and I'll take the pit crew out for drinks this week, like we did when I first joined your team.” 

“Hopefully you won't send me any angry text messages this time,” Jaime said, smirking. 

“Don't give me a reason to,” she shot back. 

“I was a perfect gentleman, it's not my fault you took my message the wrong way.” 

“You compared me to Sandor!”

“Because you're both so tall!” 

“No wonder the gossip sites love you two,” Addam sighed, levering himself up out of the chair. “They don't have to put up with this.” 

“With what?” Jaime asked just as Brienne said, “Gossip sites?”

Addam turned to Brienne. “You may want to figure out your social media strategy soon so you can control a bit of your own narrative. The speculation about you is high, especially given how private you've been about everything. It'll only get worse once the WSN interview airs.” He looked at Jaime. “As for the two of you, the gossip sites have dissected every photo of you together in an official capacity from last year, and there are a number of anonymous tongues wagging about seeing you in Tarth last August, and again in December.” 

Brienne shared a nervous glance with Jaime. “What are they saying?” she asked. 

“Nothing worth paying attention to. But if you want to guide the discussion, it would help if you had a photographer here who could capture the two of you working and not just beaming at each other. Every photo tells a story.” 

“She spent several months disliking me, there have to be lots of pictures of that story,” Jaime said. 

“Not as many as you'd think,” Addam grinned, and Brienne's face went hot when Jaime looked over at her, smug. 

“Really?”

“Don't start,” she muttered. 

“Yours are even worse, Jaime,” Addam laughed. “You have no reason to feel superior. Brienne,” he continued, ignoring Jaime's glare, “meet me at the simulator in an hour? We'll test out those Myr strategies.” 

She nodded and when Addam closed the door behind him Jaime shamelessly said, “He's not wrong: I wanted to kiss you when I saw you in my office on your first day. Well,” he gave her a roguish grin, “not just kiss you.” 

Brienne pressed her thighs together and focused on her laptop. “We are not talking about this,” she said, and though she intended to be firm her voice was far too breathy. Jaime, for once, behaved himself, and a few minutes later, her thoughts back under her own control, she was able to look over at him again with only work on her mind. “Addam's also not wrong about needing to figure out social media.”

“No, he's not. Those silly videos we always had to do kept fans on our side, and sponsors pay more when they think they're getting free advertising from them. And I know you don't enjoy the photos, but it's worthwhile to have someone capturing you making history.” 

“Women have driven before,” she said, blushing. 

“Not like you. Not like this.” He straightened a little and grinned. “And I know exactly who we can ask to do it.”

* * *

At the end of the week, Brienne entered the garage during the pit crew's so-called Snack Time. Bronn had started having the mid-afternoon group break a couple of weeks ago, admitting that with so many new people at once they were struggling to form a cohesive bond, but Jaime had smirkingly named it when he saw how young everyone looked and the name had stuck. The hope had been that being forced to gather for a set time every day just to relax would help break down some of the awkwardness between the new crew but when Brienne wandered over to their corner, they were still segregated into smaller groups – Bronn, Podrick, Willem, and Lucion together, Ygritte and Asha in another group, the rest in pairs of two or three. They all looked up as one when she came over. 

“Afternoon, Chief,” Bronn said and she smiled. 

“Chief,” she returned with a small nod. Jaime had told her Bronn had been reluctant to take on the chief mechanic role, had insisted he wouldn't do it without Podrick as his right-hand man, and she had seen in the bits of time she could spare to watch them how much of the load Pod was shouldering. When she'd talked to Bronn and Jaime about making him officially co-chief mechanic, they'd both shaken their heads. 

“We've asked him several times and he refuses,” Jaime had said. 

“Says he's not doing enough to have earned it,” Bronn scoffed. “Half a mind to just call him that anyway, but he might combust if we do.” 

So they had all agreed to let things continue as they were, even though everyone who spent time in the garage knew the truth. It was as plain as what was between her and Jaime – or so everyone seemed to keep telling her – and as ridiculous to deny, as she was starting to realize about themselves as well. Against what was surely good judgment Brienne had spent the last few nights looking at the gossip pages and comments on racing blogs to see what they were saying, and it had been mostly what she'd suspected: people decrying how big and ugly she was, others calling Jaime a “GiantSlayer” or worse, still others wondering if he'd lost his eyesight with his hand and then pedants coming along behind reminding them these photos were all taken pre-crash. 

But for all the commenters' ferocity what surprised her was how little she cared. The ones that mocked her looks hurt less than those that were attacks on Jaime and his one-handedness, and there were shockingly few that suggested she had earned her way by sleeping with him. Mostly they seemed to imply that she had to be great at what she did to convince him to sleep with her at all, which had ironically never been a possibility she'd considered. The further she got into the speculation she even started seeing responders, usually with more feminine sounding screennames, saying how romantic it all was, how they wished someone looked at them that way. 

Those had, in their own way, been the most difficult to read. She and Jaime had been through so much since September and a fair part of that had been because she'd been afraid. Brienne had convinced herself for so long, even over the summer when they'd been here on Tarth, that it was mostly physical attraction, closeness but not love, and that it wasn't worth the risk of ruin to her career or his. If she'd known some people would be on their side, if she could have been loving him all this time, if she could have spared them both at least that pain before the crash...it didn't bear thinking about. 

“Did you want something?” Bronn was asking now, and Brienne shook herself a little. The Jaime Problem had been weighing heavy on her thoughts for days, it could wait a little longer. 

“I wanted to invite all of you out for drinks tonight. With everything going on, we never had our beginning of the year kick-off.” 

“Is there even somewhere to drink near here?”

The closest bar was miles away; Tarth was not nearly as well-populated as King's Landing and the warehouse district that Evenstar's offices were in was fairly well isolated. That had been part of its appeal when her father purchased it, but it made moments like this difficult. “How about I bring the bar to us?” she said, thinking quickly. She'd been so distracted by thoughts of Jaime lately that she'd skipped right over the most obvious issue with the drinks plan. “I'll go get some alcohol and we can make our own here.” 

Bronn glanced at Podrick. “Go with her, Pod, make sure she comes back with the right stuff.” 

Pod nodded, his mouth in a determined line. “W-w-will do.” 

She rolled her eyes, but she was pleased to spend time one-on-one with Pod again; they hadn't spoken much since he'd left for Sunspear and she'd returned to Tarth. 

“How's life?” she asked as she drove them along the wet and winding roads to the nearest store. 

“P-pretty good.”

“How are your roommates?”

Podrick's exasperated sigh told her everything, but he shared some additional stories as they drove, of how Sandor sometimes snored so loud he'd wake up Willem and Pod through the thin bedroom walls; how Willem watched the world's worst shows and movies; and how Podrick had become den mother just to get them all out the door in time in the mornings. 

“I'm sorry to put you through all that,” she said, pulling into the parking lot. “But I'm really glad you're here,” she added as she turned off the car and looked at him. “I would have missed you if you weren't a part of this.” 

Pod gave her a wide, toothy smile. “M-m-me too.”

They spent longer than they should have wandering through the store, grabbing bags of chips and pretzels and cookies, ordering all of the already-cooked chicken tenders from the hot food counter, and loading up an entirely separate grocery cart just with alcohol. As they wheeled their two carts into the line, she saw the cashier's eyes widen in a slight panic, but Podrick shot her a charming smile and cheerful hello and the young woman relaxed. He wasn't flirting, but she kept looking his way when she should have been paying attention to checking them out, and Brienne had to hide a smile. 

As they wheeled their carts full of clanking bottles and rustling bags back to her dad's truck, Brienne nudged him with her elbow. “She was into you.” 

Podrick stumbled over his feet and looked at her, shocked. “W-who?”

“The cashier back there, she was interested in you.” 

She laughed gaily as Pod's ears went pink. “I-I-I think you're w-wrong. She j-just seemed fr-friendly.”

“She wasn't that friendly to me,” Brienne grinned, but she just patted him on the back and let it lie. 

When they got back, Podrick hurried to the team to finish work for the day and to tell them to head to Selwyn's garage after work for the small party. She'd texted her dad when they were at the store and he'd been happily onboard. Brienne hefted several bags in each hand and headed for the garage, the bell chiming cheerfully when she stepped inside. 

Her uncle Endrew came out from the garage bay raising one bushy eyebrow. He wasn't as tall as her father, but he was as wide, and had the same Tarth blue eyes. “Selwyn called to tell me this was happening, but I didn't believe it. His beloved garage being used for a party. I'm afraid my brother has taken leave of his senses.” 

“I'll make sure it all gets cleaned up afterward,” Brienne promised. 

“Need a hand with the bags?” he asked. 

The bell chimed again and Jaime stepped inside, loaded down with the rest of the groceries. She'd texted him when she parked, and apparently he'd run over to help. He'd loaded his arms down with as many bags as he could sling on and she appreciated the view of his firm muscles as he held everything up. “I've got it, Endrew, thanks.” Endrew shrugged and disappeared back into the bay. Jaime set the load down on the ground and looked around the garage. 

“It's a little strange being in here again,” he said, stretching his arms out.

Brienne looked around, too: the little stand full of air fresheners, the row of plastic chairs, the clean but old counter. “It's the same.” 

“I'm not,” he said quietly, but he didn't look upset, just thoughtful. 

She started setting out unopened bags of chips and pretzels on the counter. “Are you okay with that?” she asked, not sure what answer she expected to hear. 

“I think I am.” Jaime walked near her and leaned against the counter, watching her arrange bags. “Are you?” 

Brienne glanced his way. “Different, or okay with you being different?”

“Either. Both.” 

“Yes,” she said simply and Jaime nodded a little, his shoulders relaxing. 

“Good,” he said, and he brushed the back of his fingers down her arm before going to get more food to set out. “You know there are only twenty people on the pit crew right?” 

“Twenty hungry people who will also be twenty drunk people.” 

“How are you going to get everyone home safely?”

Brienne frowned at him. “Sandor,” she sighed, getting her phone back out to text him. 

With grumbling Brienne could hear even through text, Sandor agreed to be a sober shuttle service for the night, and by the time she and Jaime had set up the drinks, food, cups, and utensils, Endrew had shut the garage down for the evening and Sandor had pulled up. 

“What's this for?” he asked when he came inside. 

“Beginning of the year toast.”

“It's February.”

“We've been busy,” Brienne mumbled. Sandor grunted, unimpressed, and poured himself a cup full of soda with a splash of rum. She would have complained, but she knew he would barely taste that much rum, let alone be affected by it by the time he needed to start driving people home. 

“I think I'll head off,” Jaime said, surveying their work. 

“You don't have to go, you're part of the team, too.” 

“It will be good for you to get to know your crew without me hovering around. I'd just try to take up all your attention for myself,” he said with a gentle, self-mocking smile. 

Sandor muttered something Brienne was probably glad she couldn't make out, and ripped open one of the bags of chips before tucking it into his arm like a baby. 

She walked Jaime out of the garage, leaving Sandor munching on his chips alone for a moment. They stood outside in the gentle rain and Brienne wrapped her arms around herself to keep from holding Jaime instead. She hadn't seen much of him the last couple of weeks; Addam had been pushing her to get more time on the simulator and the trainer they'd hired to get her into shape had been relentless, making her work out two and sometimes three times a day on everything from muscle building to reflex conditioning. If he hadn't come so highly recommended by Arya, Brienne might have thrown Syrio Forel and his sometimes bizarre methods out the door, but she had to admit when she allowed herself to look in the mirror that she was seeing new definition in her muscles, could see her response times getting better on the reflex tests. Jaime had followed a similar training pattern when he was driving and she could appreciate now why he always acted a little bit like a superhero; she felt a little bit like one sometimes when she caught a quickly thrown ball she would have missed a month ago. 

“You know I don't mind talking to you,” she said, casting for one last reason for him to stay, not wanting him to go. 

“That's good since I hadn't intended on stopping.” She saw his hand flex at his side, the slight shift of his body towards her. “I can't decide if the time I spend away from you makes all of this easier or harder,” he murmured. 

“I looked the rumors up about us at the gossip sites,” she admitted suddenly, and he lifted his brows in surprise. 

“That seems...foolish.” 

She huffed a laugh. “Probably. But they're not terrible. I mean they are, but they're not more terrible than I thought. They're certainly not worse than I can bear.” 

“No?” he asked, quietly, his tone hesitant. 

“I've been thinking a lot about us,” she said, matching his softness with her own. “About what it would mean if we stopped waiting.” 

He let out a slow, shuddering breath. “That's a step I can't come back from.”

“I know. But what if I've been worried about nothing this whole time?”

Jaime shook his head. “It only feels like nothing because no one suspects. Don't make up your mind until after the first race. Gossip sites aren't the same as being there in person with drivers and engineers and cameras in your face, with the stress from being on the track.” 

Brienne sighed and nodded. “After Sunspear,” she agreed, unconvinced, and the rain dripping on her skin felt like his fingertips. 

From a distance away they heard Bronn shout, “Where's the party?”

Jaime inhaled deeply, his hand fisting at his side. “I've gotta go,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. He turned abruptly, gave Bronn, Podrick, and the others a quick wave, and hurried to his car. It had been delivered a few weeks ago, modified in King's Landing with a joystick-like addition to his steering wheel that let him steer one-handed while also able to operate the signals, headlights, and windshield wipers. It was ingenious, and she'd enjoyed the occasional mornings when he'd pick her up and evenings when he'd drop her off, the way his confidence returned to him when he was behind the wheel. It wasn't his race car, but it was freedom and independence and as she watched him slide into the driver's seat she imagined jumping in the passenger side with him, letting him drive them anywhere on Tarth or taking the ferry beyond, leaving the work and the worry behind even for a few hours. 

As his taillights receded her crew was upon her, chattering happily. Brienne pulled open the door to let them in and followed after, pushing her wet hair back from her head. Sandor had almost finished the entire bag of chips. 

“Everybody grab a drink,” she announced. “Then we'll have a little toast.” 

Bronn and Asha both went straight for the alcohol and sized each other up. “Did a year of bartending before I entered racing,” Bronn said. 

Asha took a bottle and spun it expertly on her palm. “Three years while working my way up,” she grinned sharply, and Bronn chuckled and ceded the floor. 

She poured drinks by request, muttering over the lack of ice and shakers but making do with what they had, mostly straight up shots or perfectly poured beers. Brienne forced herself to talk to the people she didn't know very well, and found herself charmed by Garlan Tyrell, a bigger, broader version of Loras with half as much ego, and fascinated by Ygritte Skirling, who had a fierce smile and a sharp, funny tongue. Once they all had a drink in hand, Brienne situated herself near the door and lifted her glass high. 

“Good evening everyone,” she said, her voice carrying through the space. She was uncomfortable with these sorts of moments – she'd barely gotten off the short welcome speech to the entire crew back in January before Jaime had stepped in smoothly – but she'd grown up in this garage and the familiar photos on the walls and comforting smells steadied her. The group quieted and gave her their attention. 

“We should have done this weeks ago,” she started, “but I'm glad we're here now. I just wanted to get you all together tonight to kick off our season and, more importantly, to thank you for taking the chance on me. We're starting from the pit lane here when everyone else is already on the grid, but I know we still have the best shot possible because of you. I've had a chance to see you work so far and you're going to be unstoppable. I won't let you down. Here's to the best crew in Formula 1!” she finished as they cheered loud and long. 

Later that night she'd sloppily waved goodbye to Sandor and flopped into bed, clutching her phone near her face. She started typing a message to Jaime but when the letters kept jumping she called him instead. 

After three rings, he answered, his voice rough and sleepy. “Brienne? Are you okay?” 

“Yes,” she said loudly and winced. “I wanted to hear your voice.” 

His laugh rumbled warm and low over the phone and she shut her eyes and drank it in. “Shall I read you a bedtime story?” 

“Only if it's a dirty one,” she said and the laugh died in his throat. 

“You should get some sleep,” he murmured, and she could feel the rasp of his voice on her skin, like the touch of his tongue. 

“Not sleepy.” 

Jaime hesitated and then she heard shifting. “Did you have fun tonight?” 

“Yes. You should have stayed.” 

“I couldn't. I can't-” he cut himself off abruptly with a sigh. “I wish I could have stayed.” 

Brienne opened her eyes wide in the darkness, trying to see what he wasn't saying, trying to see past her own aching need. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about him, thinking about Addam telling her it was already a distraction. Jaime had been distracting her since he'd turned his lips cherry red sucking on a lollipop that first day. He would have tasted sweet if she had kissed him then, but he'd been sweeter still by the side of the road last summer. 

“I want to kiss you,” she breathed and the rush of his responding exhalation was a burst of static on the phone. 

“I need to go,” he choked out and Brienne was sober enough to feel badly. 

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.” 

“It's hard enough knowing _I_ think it every day,” he said quietly. “I can't know that you're thinking it, too.” 

She pictured him in their office, those moments when she'd look up and he'd be watching her, waiting, considering. How many afternoons she'd spent trying not to imagine what he'd look like with his head pressed back in his chair, baring the corded muscles of his neck while she slowly undid his pants. Brienne took a shuddering breath, vibrantly awake and aware now. 

“Goodnight, Jaime,” she found the strength to say, fighting against the buffeting waves of desire. 

“Yeah.” He sounded resigned, and relieved. “Goodnight.” 

They hung up, but she didn't fall asleep for a long time after.

* * *

On Sunday, Brienne welcomed the small group they'd invited to watch the WSN interview to her dad's house: Jaime, Addam, Bronn, Lollys, Podrick, Arya, and their new photography and social media teammate fresh from King's Landing, Pia. When she and Peck had knocked on the door that afternoon, Brienne had gaped at them and Jaime standing behind them, beaming. 

“What are you doing here?” she'd asked the young couple. 

Peck had looked over his shoulder at Jaime, who had flourished his hands like he was a magician presenting a trick. “Pia has agreed to help with our social media and be our photographer. Peck's just visiting.” 

“Don't you have a website to upkeep? Some other scandals to hunt down?”

“Sure I do, Ms Tarth, but I can do a lot of that stuff from almost anywhere. May as well do it from here with my girlfriend.”

“Are you moving here?”

“No,” Pia said, “I'll visit a lot but I can do the social media work from anywhere and we'll be traveling to all the races anyway. I might as well do it on behalf of Evenstar Racing.” 

Brienne had blinked and then laughed a little. “Sounds like you'll be a perfect fit then,” she'd said, helpless before the unexpected delight of how people kept stepping up for them. Pia, whose face had been pinched with worry, had exhaled explosively and she'd hugged Brienne hard and then let go again before Brienne could even get her arms up. 

“Thank you,” she'd said fervently. “I can't believe I'm getting paid to work for your team! I would have done it for free.” 

“Now you tell me,” Jaime had said wryly before Brienne made room for them all to enter. As Jaime had stepped by, she'd brushed her hand along his arm in thanks and in apology for her phone call on Friday, and he'd smiled softly at her, their fingers tangling for the merest moment, but the feeling of his fingers on hers lingered. 

Once everyone had been introduced and snacks and drinks were passed around, they settled into and around the seating Brienne and her dad had cobbled together. She and Jaime ended up on the couch next to each other, but when Argella burst in she sat down in-between them, grinning, and they exchanged resigned smiles over her head. 

Pia hovered around the room, taking photos from the corners, making herself unobtrusive as everyone talked while they waited for the interview to start. She even took a picture of the two brag boards side-by-side on the wall. The Evenstar one was still mostly blank, except for a printout of Brienne's online interview with Peck and the registration form for their constructor team. Brienne looked forward to filling the rest of the space. She wondered what stories the photos of her and Jaime would tell when they were done.

When the familiar music started, Brienne went rigid on the couch, her hands gripping her own knees in excitement and fear. She had a sudden case of double-vision remembering sitting in her apartment in King's Landing a year ago all by herself, lonely and nervous. How little she'd known what was to come, that she would be here today surrounded by people she adored who had upended their lives just to help her. She blinked hard to dispel the hot tears that formed. 

“Turn the lights off,” someone whispered, and Selwyn got up and put them all in the dark, their faces illuminated just by the glow of the screen. The standard Meet the Team introduction had been expanded to take the viewer on a brief tour through the Evenstar Racing spaces. The bungalows made an appearance to the hooting of the crew, and every time one of the group was on screen there was a brief cheer or applause. Melisandre's cameras had been thorough, capturing almost all of them at work: Lollys smiling at the front desk; Arya hovering over a table with Ygritte pointing at something the viewer couldn't see; Pod and Bronn chatting in the garage. There was a shot of Addam tinkering with the simulator and finally one of Brienne and Jaime walking together across the campus to their office bungalow, their legs moving in perfect synchronization, their bodies leaning towards each other in obvious affection. She was on his right side and her hand was near his prosthetic, not touching from what she could tell, but nearly. Brienne hadn't been aware they were being filmed and it was clear Jaime hadn't either, given the way he leaned even closer at one point to whisper something even though no one else was around, and onscreen she saw her head thrown back in laughter, her hand come briefly to his shoulder to press it warmly. 

“Real subtle,” Bronn muttered quietly from nearby. 

The whole scene lasted a few seconds at most, but even as Melisandre's familiar voice filled the living room, Brienne couldn't stop picturing it as though it had been zoomed in and slowed down to run huge and frame-by-frame in her mind. Their closeness, the way they naturally moved together, how _happy_ they'd both looked simply to be near. She glanced at Jaime over Argella's head, his eyes bright as he watched the interview, the line of his jaw covered with a shadow of beard. He was going to grow it out, he'd said, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him as he did, the different ways it would feel on her skin. 

But they had to wait another month at least and the beard would be in place by then and she would have missed testing the burn of it, just like she had missed the chance to kiss him goodbye when he'd left Tarth, or to kiss him hello again when he'd come back. They'd had that one moment in his apartment in King's Landing when she'd pulled them both into the aching core of her desire, and that kiss had haunted her for days, all the more vivid framed by the negative space of the careful distance they built back up again. All because of the things people might say about them if they were publicly together, or the distraction it might cause. They'd both assumed not touching would be enough to hide their hearts from those who'd gladly rip them apart with snarling teeth, but they were both fools. Brienne could not have imagined until she saw it herself how loud they were without saying a word. The scene played again in her head, how obvious their gravitation, the way they orbited each other without even trying, and everyone else would know it too when they watched this interview. People would say awful things and she and Jaime would still be apart and she'd spend the entire time trying to navigate the track while staggering under the weight of trying to salvage her swiftly collapsing walls using reasons that folded like paper. 

The group laughed and applauded and Brienne startled, looking around. She realized belatedly that Melisandre had left in Brienne's impassioned speech about women's leagues, and they were cheering that. 

“That was awesome,” Argella said from in-between her and Jaime, and Brienne smiled at the girl as though from far away, too busy trying to patch up the dam that was crumbling apart inside her. 

It got even more impossible to ignore as the rest of the interview played out. She watched herself onscreen stealing eager glances at Jaime, saw him looking at her like the sun was rising any time she spoke. Over all of it in her mind was the image of them walking on the campus, the way their bodies so clearly already knew each other. She could lie, badly, with her words, but she couldn't lie at all with her body and neither could he and the constant, burning _want_ pulsed out of their skin without even trying, captured and presented for the masses. Here the way he leaned towards her in the chair, there how her fingers stretched towards him across the small gap between their knees. As her onscreen counterpart said her closing comments of the interview, Brienne looked over at Jaime and another careful piece of resistance crumbled at the starry-eyed admiration shining from his beautiful face. It was the same expression he had on the TV. 

Selwyn turned the lights back on as the credits rolled, and Brienne blinked in the sudden illumination. There were congratulations she was fairly sure, and Arya, Pia, and Argella immediately started expanding on Brienne's point about the women's leagues but Brienne just sat there, hyper-aware of the hypnotic scent of Jaime's cologne, knowing there were thousands of people – tens of thousands based on WSN's popularity – who knew for sure now she and Jaime were in love. How could they not after that? 

And what were they going to do about it? 

Jaime had his arm stretched out along the back of the couch, his hand near her but not touching. Brienne laid her own arm along his, her hand curled around his shoulder, and he turned his head abruptly to meet her eyes. He had seen their connection in the video, too, the way they seemed to call to each other without having to say a word. Brienne's belly shivered when Jaime licked his lips, and she pressed her fingertips into the firm line of his shoulder blade, tracing it. His chest expanded with his sudden inhalation. 

Jaime stood abruptly at a lull in the conversation and stretched, his shirt riding up a little and in the space of a second the dam sprouted a hundred cracks and she thought _I just want to touch you_ so loudly she was afraid she'd spoken the words, 

“Early day tomorrow,” Jaime said to the curious stares of the group. “I'm going to head out.” He didn't even look at her as he told the others goodbye, but she could feel his attention on every part of her skin anyway. She was sparking all over, the dam falling apart too fast for her to shore up and it was fire flooding out, burning away like so much kindling all the reasons she'd been using to convince herself she didn't need this, need him. 

He'd told her to wait until after winter testing, but as she carefully stood to walk him to the door, she knew waiting wouldn't accomplish anything. What could possibly change between now and March? She wasn't going to love him less in the meantime, wasn't going to suddenly sprout the ability to keep her eyes and her limbs from saying everything her mouth couldn't, wouldn't find some miraculous way to put out a wildfire. No wonder she flushed so much around him, when these flames kept trailing tendrils through her body, looking for a way free. 

The group pointedly not-watched them as she wound her way through their legs to escort Jaime to the door that he knew perfectly well how to find. His shoulders were tense and he could barely look at her, his eyes straying to somewhere past her neck when he turned on the porch to say goodbye. 

She thought of Tyrion's words back at Tywin's birthday party – people will assume the worst, he'd said, couching it as concern for her career. But no one controlled her destiny now except her. There was no Tywin Lannister to fire her, no holding herself back worrying that she'd be compromising Jaime's dreams. She had lived a life being talked about and made fun of, had created her own space in the middle of whatever shit they threw; they couldn't harass her out of the sport now with just their sneering disbelief, and the young, fierce, angry girl inside her relished the thought of showing up at Sunspear and telling all the judgmental gossips, fuck you, he does want me. 

“I'll see you tomorrow,” her mouth said. _Don't go, don't **go**_, her body pleaded, remembering his strong hands on her wrists, tight enough to mark her; how she'd wanted the red press of his fingers to linger long after they faded away because the memory of them never left. 

He nodded and she thought for a moment he was agreeing with her, that he also saw what Addam and Bronn and the rest had been telling them, what she _finally_ understood: regardless of whether he stayed or left tonight, the media and the fans were going to respond the same at Sunspear. What was the fucking point of going through it all anyway when she wouldn't even have him at her side? Her life was full now in a way she could never have imagined, but even with his bright eyes in her days, there was an empty, Jaime-shaped space in the night that she was so tired of trying to avoid. 

“Sleep well,” he said softly and he left and the noise from the group at her back was like the incoming tide and couldn't he hear her begging him to stay? 

Brienne closed the door and leaned her head against the wood for just a moment, surprised she didn't burn a hole in it from the heat of her skin, before she returned to the others and somehow sat quietly through the last of the group's breakdown of the interview, smiling when appropriate, even forming responses that made sense, her foot tapping, her heart beating like she was at the top of that cliff again with Galladon. When the others started gathering themselves to leave as well, Brienne felt relieved. They said goodbye, she bid her father goodnight, and she escaped through the blessedly cold night air to her home, where she paced in buzzing, restless circles around her living room, scrolling through social media on her phone and seeing all her assumptions proven right. 

'What's going on with those two?' was the very first response to WSN's posting of the video on their site and it only got more lewd and offensive from there and all she could think was _everyone knows except us._ She threw her phone on the couch. 

Brienne's legs ate up the space, her hands clenching and flexing like she was getting ready to jump into the wide blue ocean for the first time again, desire and fear blazing like a fever. It could all go so wrong; she'd known it as a child and she knew it even better now – the Conningtons of the world were many and cruel. But she was willing to risk her life to hold the wheel in her hands; couldn't she risk the daggered gossip to hold Jaime, to stop pretending she wasn't always one moment away from all her control falling apart? 

All she could think of with every heavy footstep was Jaime: his soft lips, the hard line of his jaw, the sweat-covered arch of his back as he bent over her, the trembling clench of his muscles as he came under her. 

She stilled, her toes clinging to the edge of her decision, and possibility stretched out like the ocean, the things people would say jagged rocks waiting below whether she jumped or not. All her good excuses, her perfect reasons, had turned to ash and Brienne was alight, consumed, aching. Afraid. All she had to do now was take the leap.

* * *

Jaime wasn't asleep when the knock on his door came. It wasn't for lack of trying; it was the middle of the night and he was exhausted, body and soul, and though he'd tried lying in bed, eyes closed, listening to the waves on the shore, nothing worked. 

Nothing _could_ work, not when Brienne had looked at him earlier like she'd have thrown herself at him in a second if they'd been alone together. They'd watched that damned interview and it had been clear just by watching them walk together how desperately Jaime loved her. But he couldn't do anything about it, had left as soon as he could, needing to put distance between them before his heart pounded out of his skin. He'd come home and orgasmed so quickly from a few quick pulls on his cock that he would have been ashamed if anyone had known. 

He would keep his promise to her and wait until the end of his days if he had to, but gods sometimes it took more willpower than he had to do it. 

When the familiar double-tap knock echoed through his apartment, Jaime stilled where he'd been sitting on the couch staring out at the dark sky. It was a clear night and the stars were bright out over the ocean, the moon a brilliant slivered crescent cut out of the black. Waxing, he knew. He'd become familiar with the phases of the moon here even in the few weeks he'd lived on Tarth. The world itself felt closer on the island, like nature was a partner and not something to be subjugated. He understood better now Brienne's embrace of storms. 

The knock thundered in his head once more and Jaime considered feigning sleep, not sure he had the strength to do what needed to be done to keep his distance from her. But he couldn't leave her out there ignored, and she was too stubborn to believe he'd sleep through it anyway, so Jaime padded barefoot to the door and opened it halfway. Brienne stood in the hallway in loose exercise pants and a zipped up hoodie. She looked like she'd run here: hair a mess, cheeks flushed, breathing hard. 

Jaime gripped the door so hard it creaked under his hand. “What do you need?” he asked, hating the aggressive frustration in his tone but too tightly wound to soften it. 

“I didn't want you to go,” she whispered hoarsely and Jaime thought he'd rip the door off its hinges if he held it any tighter. 

“I only came here,” he managed to say. “Not that far.” 

“Can I come in?” she asked, her voice pleading. 

“What is it? Do you want to talk?” he asked, helpless from being here yet again, torn between the promise he wanted to keep and the unending demands of his heart. 

“I'm tired of talking.” Brienne's voice hummed low and throaty in the darkness, buzzing over his skin. She stepped nearer, her heat pulling at him. He had to tighten every muscle to keep from swaying closer to her, the threshold between them his only strength. 

“I told you, I can wait,” he said, his voice gravel and stone, and he could, he _could_, though it might kill him to do so. 

Brienne shook her head. “I can't.” She crowded into his apartment, into him, shutting the door behind her and crushing their lips together and he wanted what she was offering more than he wanted to breathe but he couldn't survive jumping off this cliff if she was going to let go halfway down. Teetering on the edge, Jaime curled his hand into her hair and tugged her away. 

“Everyone will talk,” he gasped. 

“They already do.”

“They'll say terrible things.” 

“Let them. Words are wind. This is real,” she breathed, her lips dark and wet in the night, her pupils wide enough to swallow him whole. “This is what I want. _You_ are what I want.” 

Her body was still pressed to his and he strained against her, eager and nearly out of control. He had to hold on, to protect them from themselves. He had promised. “It will be a distraction.” 

“It already is,” she insisted. She made a low growl of needy frustration that he felt like a shock on his skin. “I've been thinking about this, about you, for days. Weeks. I think about you all the time. I know what I'm doing, Jaime, what we're committing to.”

_Ask her_, he told himself. _Ask her one more time and then you never have to ask her again._ “Are you sure?” His voice sounded guttural and half-gone even to himself, but he had to be absolutely certain. He could not survive holding back from her again. “If we do this, I won't hide. Everyone will find out: the other drivers, the media, the fans. They'll all know.”

“You saw that video. They already know,” she said, smiling sweetly. His smile. She scraped her fingers through his hair, leaving a tingling trail. “And if they don't, we'll tell them. All of them, every last person in the world. I don't care if they know, I don't care what they say. We've waited too long already, it took me too long to realize that it doesn't matter what they think or say or do. Not when you – all of you – is what I could have had all this time.” 

During the endless space between one heartbeat and the next, Jaime searched her face, but the dark couldn't hide the shining truth of what she was saying. The carefully guarded latch burst open inside him, and everything he'd been trying to deny, to hide, to hold back since last summer, since last January, came surging forth and Jaime swarmed into her, devouring her bountiful lips like it was his dying wish. Her tongue tangled hungrily with his and he was willingly consumed by the fire of her familiar mouth, their bodies pressed hard against each other. His hand roamed everywhere, tugging her near and then nearer still. Brienne's muscular thigh brushed his cock and Jaime groaned, rutting against her. 

“Why aren't we naked yet?” she panted against his lips, her long fingers pulling at the ends of his t-shirt and yanking it off of him letting the cool night air rush in. His fingers went to the zipper of her hoodie and when he tugged it down it revealed the bare, pale freckled skin of her chest, the small swell of her breasts, her nipples hard and flushed. 

“Oh gods,” he moaned, not even bothering to slide the hoodie off before he took one nipple and most of her breast into his mouth, sucking hard, teeth grazing the tender skin while she threw back her head and whimpered desperately into the night. She tasted salty on his tongue; she'd been sweating before she came to him. He wanted to taste the sweat on her thighs, too, and along the curve of her ass. He brought his hand up to cup her other breast except it was his right arm and his stump brushed uselessly along her side and abruptly Jaime pulled away, looking for disgust in her response. Brienne's eyes were round and wild in the dim light, her reddened mouth pulled into a frown. 

“What is it?” she whispered. 

“It won't be the same,” he apologized, moving his residual limb away. She grabbed his stump before he could hide it and pressed her lips to the tenderest part on the inside of his wrist, leaving soft kisses along the line of scars, and Jaime's whole body shuddered as he tried not to come undone. 

“It won't,” she murmured. “It will be better. We don't have to hide it this time.” 

“Brienne,” he said in a strangled voice. He'd thought when they were finally here he would have nothing but words for her, telling her how much he loved her, how incredible she was, all the ways he wanted to make her scream, but he found himself entirely at a loss except for her name. “_Brienne_,” he said again, like that single word could hold the weight of all he needed to say. 

It must have worked because she kissed him deeply and let her hoodie drop to the floor, slipped her fingers to the waistband of her pants and took those off, too. Jaime drank her in for a moment, naked and glowing like a dream of a woman, but real when he put his hand against her waist and she trembled at his touch. She'd gotten more muscular since the last time they'd been together, the long line of her thighs sharp with tension, her broad shoulders able to bear his weight even more easily. He traced his fingers along the still-delicate line of her collarbones, his thumb over the curve of her jaw until he saw the fine pale hairs standing up along her arms. 

“I want to see you, too,” she said, and he stripped off his pants so they were both standing naked in his living room, their bodies tipping towards each other, pulled by the magnets lodged deep in their chests, the lodestones that brought them together time and again. She pressed her palms to his body, branding him with her heat, and he wrapped his arms around her, low around her ass. 

“Put your legs around me,” he said, and she stiffened, obviously reluctant. “Dammit, Brienne, I can still do this,” he growled, bending his knees and hefting her up anyway, her legs slipping around him when he did, her delighted gasp loud in his ear. Jaime pressed his lips to the pulse at the bottom of her throat, the beat of it a drum on his tongue as he carried her to his bedroom, and his arms trembled only a little when he set her back down, her smile delighted and shy and sexy all at once. He had her knees against the mattress and he pushed a little further so she sat and then laid back, pulling herself up so she could stretch the long expanse of her pale legs on his bed with him kneeling between them. Brienne watched him, her eyes as vivid and deep blue as a promise, her chest dipping in and out of shadow with her anticipation. Jaime settled back on his heels and took her in: the wet, red lips of her mouth and her sex, the angles and planes of her torso, the face he saw in every moment of his future from now until the sun went dark. 

There had been nights he couldn't sleep from wanting her, from needing the feel of her shuddering body just like this as he rubbed his hand up her calf, over the hard bump of her knee, along the soft inside of her thigh. Jaime trailed his fingers over the curled hairs at her center to find her already soaked. He slipped two fingers into her heat and her strong walls pulsed around him as she moaned low. Brienne lifted herself up on one arm and wrapped her free hand around his cock, pulling long and slow to match the rhythm of his fingers in her cunt while he leaked into her palm and his hips jerked towards her. It was a good thing he'd taken care of himself earlier or this would have ended long before he was ready. As it was, he pressed his stump against her arm, stilling her movement, already feeling a tightening he wasn't ready to set free. 

Jaime slipped his hand out and drew wet trails along her stomach that he gently leaned over and blew on and she shivered and wrapped her long fingers in his hair to pull with short, sharp tugs just on the blissful edge of painful as she directed him to her mouth. He kissed her softly before lifting himself up so he was hovering over her, able, thankfully, to support enough weight on his stump that he could stare straight down at her: the crooked line of her nose, the freckles so faint in the night against her star-bright skin. She smiled at him, a wide, hopeful, loving crease, and he would have surrendered anything to her to keep that look on her face. 

He pressed against her pubic bone and she surged up towards him, her hips moving restless as the ocean, overwhelming him with the scratchy rub of her hair on his too sensitive skin. Jaime shifted and his cock slipped down to her center and they both moaned as he dipped just the head in, her heat almost too much, teasing them both with the promise of more just within reach. 

For all the long nights on his own since she had called it off, for the times he'd spilled into his own hand or the pounding water of the shower, _this_ was still as familiar and necessary as breathing. The way her body matched his from top to toes; the little noises she made in the back of her throat in a constant, desperate song of want; how eager she was for him every time, reflecting his own stunned gratitude that she welcomed him back to her arms over and over. Jaime had once thought he'd never love anything in his life as much as he'd loved racing, but that was only because he hadn't met Brienne yet. 

“Please,” she begged, the pads of her fingers hard and yearning on his skin as he hesitated there, keeping them apart for one second more, and then another, the slow torture of being so close and not giving in. A torture they'd been putting themselves through for months. There was no reason to hold back any longer. 

Jaime went to his elbows and nuzzled his nose against her ear, felt her blunt nails curl possessively into his back. “I love you,” he whispered as he slid all the way inside her, smooth with how slick they both already were, and she let out an inarticulate cry. Even in the dark it felt like he was drowning in her sunlight. “I love you so fucking much, Brienne.” He thrust as he talked, the flood of everything he wanted to say set loose now that she was wrapping him up, long legs curled over his thighs, strong arms around his back, her heat swelling around his cock. “Every time I'm near you I want to touch you.” Her walls squeezed him tight and he gasped and gritted his teeth. He wanted more of this, of her, even as the pressure built and spiraled up his spine. “It killed me to not even be able to touch you,” he managed. Jaime mouthed the salt along the curve of her neck as he slid in and out of her drenching wetness, as she curled like a vise around him and pulled him deeper, mumbling his name between panting breaths. She was everywhere and he still didn't have enough. He wanted all of it at once: her riding him glorious and strong; him putting his mouth on her to drink until she had nothing left; Brienne on her knees, her back long and broad and flexing under his hand. He _wanted_. _There's time for all of it_, he thought before being consumed by her moans turning into escalating cries, by her clenching him harder and more desperately to her, by the abandon with which he thrust into her, her hips canting up to meet his every move as easy and in tune as any moment of their lives. He'd worried they'd be out of step with all of his changes and hers, but her nipples still tightened at his touch, her powerful body still trembled when he scraped his teeth along her jaw. 

“I've dreamed about fucking you again,” he growled into her ear and her cries turned sharper, as she pulled and clutched him against her, demanding more. “How wet you are, how you want this. Do you want this, Brienne? Do you want me?”

“Yes,” she moaned, “yes, _please_, Jaime.” 

“Tell me,” he demanded. He freed his hand and slid it between their stomachs slippery with sweat, until he could press against her clit as she whimpered and pleaded nonsense words in his ear. His groin tightened, the edge so close as he drove into her. He needed her to be with him. “Please,” he begged. 

“I want you.” Her hands pressed into his skin, claiming him with her calloused palms. “I love you,” she breathed as loud as a storm in his ear. “I love you, Jaime.” It was enough, it was too much, and he cried out loud and long like his heart was pouring out of him as he stuttered inside of her, as she held him close and somehow, after months – after a lifetime – of waiting, took that leap down with him.

* * *

Brienne burst out of the ocean that had capsized her and she breathed hard, enjoying the feel of Jaime's firm chest rising and falling against hers, alternating with her own heaving breaths. She ran her fingers through the sweaty hair at his temple, kissed his stubbled check, and shut her eyes so all she was was sensation. 

She would have happily fallen asleep that way, with Jaime heavy on top of her, heavy inside her, if he'd let her. But his hand grabbed at the cover trying to pull it over top of them before he realized they were weighing it down with their bodies, and then he mumbled something into her shoulder that she didn't understand and he was moving out and off of her while she whined in protest. 

“Shift a little,” he murmured, tugging harder. 

“No,” she said, curving her arms around him, trying to pull him back. He laughed softly into her neck, a hot, humid puff of air that made her shiver. 

“It gets cold in here at night.” 

“I don't need a blanket, I've got you,” she insisted. 

He hummed, a happy buzz against her chest, and rubbed his nose through her hair. “Bathroom's just down the hall if you need it,” he said, giving up on the cover and pulling her close again. 

This time it was she who had to pull away, and she sighed and got up, looking around for something to cover herself with. 

“Go naked, no one but me can see you,” he said, admiration bright in his eyes. “I'd prefer it that way.” 

Brienne barely resisted covering her body with her arms and went to relieve herself, glanced at her flushed and happy face in the mirror. She looked like she'd just had sex with the man she loved, and she couldn't stop from grinning stupidly at herself because of it, or at him when she returned to find he'd adjusted the covers for them. She crawled under them and he looped his arms around her, pulling her tight against his body, and they curved together like they'd been made for it. 

It was dark in the bedroom, so little moonlight to speak of that she could make out only shadows. She looked forward to seeing more of it in the morning, of waking up with him breathing against her skin. They could have been going to sleep like this for months. 

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, and Jaime went still and rigid against her, and Brienne realized what he must be thinking and hurriedly added, “that we didn't do this sooner.” 

“Oh,” he exhaled, the tension still slow to bleed out of him. His arm tightened against her chest. “What changed your mind?”

Brienne licked her lips, not sure how to explain. “I was afraid that if we offered ourselves up for everyone else's judgment that they would tear us down, but I understood tonight, watching us on that documentary...we've already been standing there before them, not hiding anything. They're going to judge us regardless, and it seemed pointless to go through that without you by my side.” She turned a little to glance at his shadowed face. “These months we've spent, they made me realize that I love you more than I'm afraid of anything else.” 

She was close enough to see his lips part, feel his stuttered breath. He kissed her cheek softly. “I would have waited longer,” he murmured, “but I'm glad we didn't have to.” 

“You have Addam to thank for some of it,” she said, feeling him smile against her skin before she turned on her side again. “He's got some unexpected wisdom.” 

Jaime pressed his nose against the back of her neck, kissed her between her shoulders. “I'm definitely better in bed,” he said and she snorted. 

“You can't seriously be jealous of him _now_.” 

“No, no, I'm grateful if he's part of why you're here. I'm just reminding you of my many other excellent qualities.” 

“This isn't a job interview,” she said, twisting back around to face him. 

“If it was, I don't have a lot of good references, so you'd have to give me an on-the-job skills test,” he grinned. Brienne laughed and trailed her arm over his side, through the fuzz of hair around his navel. Jaime had lost some definition without his obsessive exercise regimen, but she liked the softness it brought him, the way her fingers could form their own paths on his body. 

“The position requires a lot of late nights,” she said seriously, dragging her hand up his chest to circle around the back of his neck. He looked happier than she'd ever seen him, even the first time they'd had sex, his face so loose and light it was a wonder he didn't just levitate off the bed. 

“Night times are my specialty,” he promised. 

“I'll work you very hard.” 

“I think you'll find I'm a very _dedicated_ employee.” 

“Then I guess you're hired,” she murmured as he pressed kisses along her jaw, down her neck and shoulder. 

“You know if someone asks if I fucked you to get this job, I’m going to have to say yes,” Jaime said as he moved down her body. 

Brienne laughed until it turned to moaning under his tongue, and by the time they fell asleep she was too limp and satisfied and happy to worry about anything except how tired she was going to be at work tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're interested, [here's a video of the one-handed steering wheel modification Jaime has on his car](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCe_33bII_o).
> 
> Also this song lyric from Andrew Belle's "Drought" has been on constant repeat in my head for two weeks: _Our love's a fire that we can't put out_ but it felt too spoilery to start the chapter with that. :D


	27. February (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They woke with the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look what shipping-receiving on tumblr drew for me!!!!
> 
>   

> 
> This is exactly how I see the Evenstar Racing logo. I can't stop staring at it. She's also [languageintostillair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair) here on AO3 and has some great fics you should check out! Start with "I never knew home until I found your hands."

They woke with the sun, Brienne blinking and taking a minute to orient herself. She heard Jaime's steady breathing, felt his hand flex and then relax on her hip, and felt a flood of pleasant warmth spread through her. In the morning light she could see his bedroom was spare – dark grey and white sheets on the bed, a small walk-in closet, a sturdy looking end table on her side that had a clock that she blinked at owlishly. 

“Is that time right?” she asked, and he grumbled behind her, his hand sliding up her stomach to her breast, where he gently rubbed the pads of his fingers over her nipple. “Jaime,” she gasped, “we're late for work.” 

“Not going,” he rumbled, his voice rough with sleep. “Staying here.” 

“We can't skip work,” she sighed, but the only movement she made was to press back against him to feel his hardening length against her ass. 

“I wasn't kidding about keeping you in my bed all day,” he said, his lips close to her ear. He tugged gently at her earlobe, slid his cock between her legs, and they were both suddenly much more awake. 

“We should text them,” she managed as he nudged her leg up to position himself better. “So they don't worry.” 

His hand disappeared from her chest and she felt him moving around behind her, before his phone dropped down on the pillow in front of her nose. “Go ahead,” he said, slipping into her as she moaned low in her throat. 

It took her ten tries to type out the simple message to Addam in all lowercase, 'day off for me and jaime,' which she sent before remembering it was Jaime's phone. She didn't care as his teeth bit firm into the flesh of her neck and his hand traveled down between her folds. 

After they'd both stopped shuddering, Brienne checked his phone and saw Addam had responded with a truly obnoxious amount of party and various happy-faced emojis. She held the phone up so Jaime could see and he chuckled. 

“They'll all know by lunch,” he said.

“Maybe they'll leave us alone then,” she said. “Which means we have time for a late breakfast together at my favorite diner, if we can at least get out of bed for that.” 

Jaime's eyes softened with joy. “I would love nothing better.” 

Brienne got out of his bed and tried to remember where she'd left her clothes, then flushed when she recalled how she'd left her home. She glanced back at Jaime, who was still lying in bed, staring at her. “What are you doing?” she asked, awkwardly hugging herself.

“Admiring the view,” he said, smiling, before getting up himself. She did a little view-admiring herself as he walked down the hall to the bathroom, before she turned on the light in his walk-in closet. He had a row of neatly hung shirts, another of slacks, and more variations on simple pull-on pants than he'd probably ever owned in his life. His socks were lumped together in a messy pile; when they'd been practicing his laundry folding skills late last year he'd always hated doing socks the most. She smiled fondly. 

“Can I borrow a shirt?” she asked, and then jumped when his arms came around her waist. “Gods, you're quiet as a cat.” 

Jaime rested his chin on her shoulder. “Yes you can borrow a shirt. And pants and underwear. Take whatever you want, wear it all day, and then leave it here without washing it so it still smells like you.” He pressed his nose behind her ear and inhaled. “I love your smell.” 

Brienne shivered a little and rubbed her hand along his arms crossed over her stomach. “Food,” she reminded them both, and he slowly let her go. 

She insisted on taking separate showers and they made it to the diner, where they were greeted cheerfully by the waitress and several of the nearest patrons congratulating them on the interview the night before. Brienne held Jaime's hand as they stood in the waiting area, blushing through the attention, and though she felt the weight of several curious stares on them, no one seemed particularly surprised or repulsed. After brunch, both of them full and content, Jaime drove them around to the east side of the island and the ruins of Morne. When they parked, she looked at him curiously. 

“There's something I wanted to do last time we were here,” he said, leading her through the ruins to the tall standing tower. He pretended to be her guide this time, making up silly stories until her cheeks hurt from laughing while they shivered at the cold wind blowing in from the sea. 

“It looks different in the winter,” he said as they stared at the waters turned gray-blue under the cloudy sky. “But it'll work just fine.” He put his right arm around her and pulled her flush against him, kissing her slow and gentle. When her eyes fluttered closed as she explored the heat of his mouth with the wind whipping cold around them, she heard the click of a camera shutter. 

Brienne's eyes flew open again and Jaime grinned at her, his left arm held out to the side taking a selfie of the two of them kissing. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, her cheeks going hot. She ducked her face against his neck and she could feel him shaking his head. 

“Documenting our day,” he said into our hair. “This is a nice island you've got here, I want photos of it.” 

“Then take pictures of the island, not me,” she said into his skin. Her tongue darted out, tasting the sea wind on his neck, and he hummed pleasantly in her ear. 

“I need a new lockscreen photo. Here, look,” he said, gently moving her head away as he flipped quickly to the photo he'd just taken. Steeling herself, Brienne glanced at the picture out of the corner of her eye, and then looked closer. She had never once tried to imagine what she looked like while kissing someone, and she didn't know if it was because Jaime took up more of the screen than she did or because she looked so blissful doing it, but she didn't hate it. She even sort of liked how she looked, her head tilted down towards his, her hand resting lightly against his chest. Her jaw looked almost elegant in its firmness, her nose was mostly hidden, her lips were pressed to Jaime's like they belonged there. “Well?” he asked and when Brienne looked at him she saw he already knew her answer. 

“Good lighting,” she said and Jaime snickered. He kissed her again, a soft press of his lips, the gentle touch of his tongue and she melted against him. When they heard the voices of other visitors, Jaime broke the kiss, but she stayed pressed against his body instead of pushing him away, her fingers curling into his sweater, her leg sliding between his. 

“Come on,” he said, leading her further into the ruins. “There are lots of other spots where I want to make out with you.” 

Some time later, Brienne still dizzy from Jaime's skilled mouth, he drove them quickly along the winding roads until they were back at his apartment again, and then back in his bed, taking his time and exploring every inch of her chest with his tongue, his fingers and then his cock deep inside her, her legs spread wide and eager and waiting for him as they moved together in slowly crashing waves. 

Well into the evening later, after a nap and Brienne waking Jaime up with her hand sliding firmly along his steadily growing erection, she checked her phone for the first time that day and found it swamped with messages. There were a handful from work that stopped sometime around lunch, as Jaime had predicted; a couple from her dad wondering where she'd gone with his truck that stopped around the same time, which made her flush wondering who had passed her whereabouts along to him and in what manner. Then many more from people congratulating her on the interview, including numbers she'd never seen before: one from Robb Stark saying he was looking forward to racing against her, another from Renly commenting on how well she'd done. Hyle sent her one saying 'Guess I see why you turned me down' that felt both very pointed and very mysterious at once. And a peculiar message that said, 'Please ask my nephew to call me. I'd like to talk to him. - Genna Lannister' 

Jaime was scrolling through his own messages in bed next to her and she nudged him with her elbow. “Who's Genna?” she asked, showing him the text. 

He furrowed his brow. “One of the few good Lannisters,” he said. “I think you met her at my father's birthday. How did she get your number?” 

“I'm asking myself that question a lot today,” Brienne said, showing him the other messages. 

“Renly never even texted me when I was in the hospital,” he grumbled, and Brienne turned her head to kiss his stubbled cheek, not really even noticing she'd done it until she turned back to her phone, settling in to start responding to messages and she realized Jaime was staring at her. His face was open and bright, the echoes of his heart in his eyes. “You shouldn't stare,” she said, not knowing what else to say, the expansive ocean of love in her own heart too much to swim safely across right now. 

“Are you staying over tonight?” he asked and Brienne's busy fingers stilled. 

“I don't have anything with me. But...we could go back to my house.” 

Jaime's smile was instant, and blinding, before he narrowed his eyes at her playfully. “You're going to make me have dinner with your father, aren't you?” 

“It's late already, but he'll definitely want to see you for breakfast.” 

Jaime groaned. “That's even worse. Then he'll know for sure that I've spent all night debauching his daughter.” 

Brienne bit her lip but she couldn't stop her wide grin from slipping free. “Surely not _all_ night, we will sleep some.”

He shifted down to lick a long stripe between the small swell of her breasts, and then looked up at her from under his dark golden lashes, his eyes glinting green and hungry. “I wouldn't bet on that,” he murmured, before making an enthusiastic start on the debauching.

* * *

She parked in front of her house late that night, and she was relieved to see her father's windows were dark as they quietly walked the path around to her own little home. She might have joked about it in bed with Jaime earlier, but she wasn't looking forward to the awkward conversation that inevitably awaited them tomorrow. 

Jaime had packed a small bag for the morning, and he set it down by the side of the bed before stripping down to his boxers. Brienne watched him avidly, the shift and pull of his muscles in the warm glow of the small lamp by her bedside, the way the hair on his head and his chest caught the light, the lazy curl of his fingers as he gestured for her to join him in her own bed. 

She pulled off her pants, but left Jaime's shirt on. It was a little tight in the shoulders, but the faint scent of his cologne and detergent had been just on the edge of her attention all day, and she wasn't ready to give it up yet, even though the man himself was there waiting for her. Brienne curled into his side, pressing her fingers over his arms, his chest, down the strong line of his leg, like she was testing that he was real. He had been here last summer, but back then she'd been as worried about being caught as she had enjoyed his touch. Now she could just focus on his solid weight, the way he shivered when she moved down to kiss the slight jut of his hipbone. Brienne rubbed his cock through the fabric of his underwear, and then she pulled the elastic down enough to reveal it, kissing the tip while he gasped. 

For the many times they had been together during their secret relationship, Brienne had never put her mouth on him the same way he so eagerly had for her. It wasn't for lack of desire on her part; she'd thought about it from the first day, but he always seemed so desperate just to have her, never wanting her to stop long enough to do this for him. She pulled his underwear down to his knees and looked up at him from between his legs, his cock curling long and hard between them. 

“You don't have to do this,” he said roughly, though the desire for it was plain on his sharp features. 

“I want to,” she assured him. “If you do?” He swallowed hard, nodding a little. 

She moved forward and his hand curved around the back of her head, his fingers tight but patient in her hair, not forcing her in any direction. Brienne had never done this before, but she could make some assumptions, and she started by kissing her way up his shaft. Jaime whined low, a startlingly needy sound, and when she reached the top she took the head fully in her mouth and he cried out, his hips lifting up off the bed until she pushed them firmly back down. 

That seemed to make him lose all sense, and curses and compliments fell from his lips in equal measure as she swirled her tongue over and around the blunt head of his cock, sucked as much as she could in her mouth, enjoying the weight and salty-bitter taste on her tongue, the stretch of her lips around him. 

“Fuck,” he hissed, “yes, _fuck_, Brienne. You're so-” 

Whatever he was going to say was lost beneath a garbled whine when Brienne, emboldened by his clearly rapturous enjoyment so far, gently touched her teeth to his shaft, pressed her fingers into the v of his hips, and carefully took him apart with the same dedicated joy he had applied to her many times before. Jaime undulated under her unyielding grip and his hand fell from her head to tangle fiercely in the sheets; Brienne hummed low with pleasure when the rest of his words failed him and he was all whimpering need. He tightened under her, pushing frantically at her head but she only closed her eyes and opened her mouth and he cried out as he jerked hard against her strong hands, as she awkwardly swallowed him down and licked him clean after. 

Jaime reached out with trembling, clenching fingers, circling tight around her shoulder, her upper arm, urging her up to him and she went, gasping when he surged forward to crush his mouth to hers. She steadied herself with a hand against his chest and his heart thundered under her touch. 

“My turn,” he whispered against her lips, his right arm coming around her waist to lay her down on the bed underneath him. 

“I don't need-” she started before it was lost on a moan when his mouth pressed hot against her panties. Brienne let her legs fall wide, felt his stump and forearm holding her open while he tugged aside the cotton and fucked her slowly with his tongue. She was fairly sure she shouted at some point but she didn't care, was too far gone with pleasure to care about anything but Jaime's tongue and fingers expertly bringing her to her peak once more, and then again, and when he started pulling her underwear down her hips she blinked and came enough back to her spent body to tug at his hair and whisper “Come here.” 

“You're good?” he murmured, rubbing his nose over her shoulder, his prickly chin over her chest. 

“I'm exhausted,” she said on a half-laugh, and she could feel the smug pride in his smile on her skin. “Are you?”

“Yeah. I'm great,” he whispered as they wrapped their arms around each other. 

She ran her tongue along her teeth, her lips, and tasted him still. “Why did you never let me do that before?” she quietly asked. 

“Everything felt so urgent. I never felt like we had time,” he said; his tone was loose and warm and not blaming her at all, but she felt the regret anyway and kissed his forehead. He sighed, a soft, happy noise, and snuggled deeper into her arms. “We have time now.” 

Brienne kissed him again, closed her eyes and felt his breath tickling her skin, smelled the mix of both their scents on the air. She thought of waking up with him tomorrow, of facing her father and then going into work. She had exercises and meetings and publicity shots with Pia on her schedule; Jaime had much the same on his. They would both be behind on everything after today, would be going nonstop for the next six months until summer break, and then again the months after that. There was still Tywin and Lannister Corp to deal with, the media and the inevitable cruel comments to face, the simple fact that she'd missed her shopping day today and needed more food in her fridge. But Brienne was smiling as she fell asleep, because winding through all of what was to come, as constant and endless as the ocean always there just off Tarth's shores, was the knowledge that they would have more nights and mornings and moments like these through it all, a foundation from which they would launch this impossible year.

* * *

Brienne's alarm went off first the next morning, and she fumbled with her phone to turn it off, before burrowing back into Jaime's arms. Eyes still closed, he sought her out with his lips, pressed a kiss to her ear, found his way along her jaw to her mouth. 

“We have to go to work today,” she said with no real interest in doing so in her tone, and Jaime considered for a long moment whether he could convince her into taking another day off, but he had a phone interview with one of the many Formula 1 news sites today, and they needed to check on the status of the car with winter testing so near, and he was pretty sure no one had made plans for how exactly they were going to do the car reveal at testing, which meant someone had to start thinking about it. 'Someone' in this case being him. For a moment he missed the simplicity of just being the driver. 

Jaime sighed heavily and nodded against her back. “We do.” He kissed her shoulder and rolled onto his back, stretching his arms out wide, then laughing a little when Brienne tickled her fingers along his ribs. 

“What are you doing, Wrench?” he growled, grabbing her wrist. 

“Waking you up,” she said, all false innocence, and he decided that they couldn't miss the whole day, but they could definitely be a little late as he pressed her back down into the bed and found her already wet and ready for him. 

“We're going to have to wake up earlier,” she said ruefully later, after they'd gotten ready to go. 

“A small price to pay,” he smiled. Jaime kissed her softly and then just stared at her until the blush predictably crept over her cheeks, scooted down her neck. 

“What?” she said, frowning a little, not because she was mad, he knew, but from embarrassment. 

Two days ago Jaime had been as happy as he could ever remember being, but even then he couldn't have imagined life would feel this bright and buoyant, just from waking up next to Brienne. It was miraculous and terrifying all at once. Selywn had warned him that Brienne didn't know how much Jaime could hurt her, but he was well aware of how deeply she could hurt him; and though he trusted her, there was a part of his heart that was still nervous. 

“Do we have time for breakfast?” he asked. 

Brienne glanced out the window and he knew she was checking to see if her dad's truck was there. At the creases that appeared on her forehead, he figured it was. “Yeah,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let's do this.” 

Jaime took her hand and she squeezed his tightly, holding on and not letting go even when the door to Selwyn's kitchen closed behind them and her father looked up from where he was making an omelette at the stove. 

“Good morning,” Selwyn said, taking them and their clasped hands in with one sweep of his gaze. Jaime suddenly felt nervous, too, even though things had been going well between him and Brienne's father since Crone's Day. 

“Morning, Dad,” Brienne said, unlinking their hands so she could go give her father a quick kiss on the cheek. Selwyn smiled down at his daughter with such tenderness Jaime had to look away, moved and envious all at once. 

“Good morning to you, too, Jaime,” Selwyn said and when Jaime looked up the other man was focused on his cooking again, the line of his broad shoulders firm. 

“Uh, good morning. It smells delicious in here.” 

“Mm,” Selwyn hummed. “Would you like some?” 

Jaime glanced at Brienne and she shrugged. “Sure, that would be great. Thanks.” 

“Why don't you pour us all some orange juice and Brienne can help get more ingredients?” 

Jaime did as he was bid, going to the cabinet Brienne pointed him to, carefully filling the cups with one hand. 

“Have a nice day off?” Selwyn asked as Jaime was pouring the last glass, and he spilled some over the edge, grimacing. 

“We went to Morne,” Brienne said, handing Jaime a couple of paper towels. 

“Cold day for it.” 

“Not too cold,” she said. 

Jaime wanted to yell just to break the thick tension, but instead he cleaned up the mess and set the drinks around the table and then took a seat and wondered why omelettes took so long to cook. 

Selwyn asked them a few questions about the car and preparations for Sunspear, commented again on how well Brienne had comported herself during the interview, and by the time they each had a plate full of omelette in front of them, Jaime recognized that Selwyn was just as nervous and uncertain about how to handle this as they were. He'd certainly never had a chance to meet any of Brienne's boyfriends before, given she'd never had any. Jaime tested the sound of that in his head, repeating, _I am Brienne's boyfriend_ and _my girlfriend, Brienne Tarth_, a few times before they settled around him like a warm and comfortable cloak and he was grinning into his orange juice.

“What's so funny?” she asked him when they were nearly done, and Jaime swallowed down a delighted laugh. 

“Just enjoying the absurdity of our situation,” he said, which was at least partially true. Brienne flushed and Selwyn looked up at him, curious. “You know, all this” Jaime tried to explain, waving his prosthetic hand between the three of them. “Our very polite and stilted breakfast.” 

“Ah,” Selwyn said and he looked as embarrassed as Brienne. “I wasn't trying to make things awkward,” he murmured and Brienne put her hand on his arm. 

“It's fine, Dad. Jaime's just incapable of shutting off his inappropriate sense of humor.” 

“My girlfriend,” Jaime said, testing the sound of it out loud, having to briefly bite down on his lip to keep from laughing at the way their big blue eyes both went round, “doesn't appreciate the humor inherent in the situation.” 

“It's not funny,” she insisted, although her eyes were sparkling like Shipbreaker Bay in the sunlight. 

“It's a little funny,” Selwyn said, and Jaime did laugh then and the tension retreated. 

The remainder of their breakfast wasn't exactly comfortable, but at least it wasn't agonizing, and when Selywn offered them a ride in to work, they chatted nonstop about the plan for the day the whole drive. 

When they got on campus, they almost immediately ran into Addam, who was grinning so wide Jaime braced himself for whatever was about to happen. 

“Well!” Addam said loudly as they stood in-between bungalows. “Well, well, well.” 

“Get it over with,” Jaime sighed. 

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Addam said, his eyes gleaming. “Did you know you both took yesterday off? Isn't that remarkable?” 

“We're really doing this?”

“There's a rumor,” Addam went on mercilessly, “that you spent the day _together_.” He waggled his eyebrows in such an over-the-top way that Brienne burst into loud, braying laughter and even Jaime had to join in. 

“If there's a rumor it's because you started it, you idiot. We texted you,” Jaime reminded him. 

“You did!” he exclaimed, as though he'd forgotten. “So how was your day off? Did you manage to get any rest or were you engaged in more...strenuous pursuits?” 

“You're the worst,” Jaime said without rancor. 

“Is it true, my lady, that you have chosen this most peculiar man as your companion?” he said, turning his full attention on Brienne. Jaime wasn't jealous at all of the way her cheeks went pink, mostly because he'd done that to her this morning with his tongue. 

“Unfortunately so, ser.” 

Addam clasped his hand to his chest in mock despair. “Woe! Woe unto me! I've missed my chance with a most remarkable woman.” And Jaime knew he was joking, that Addam and Brienne had built the foundation of a genuine friendship already, but he suspected there was some small dusting of truth at least on Addam's part. He'd been as impressed by Brienne as Jaime was, which was one of the reasons they were friends. 

“I'm sure the rest of the women of Westeros will be thrilled that you've returned to the pool,” she said, delighted, and Jaime was nearly overwhelmed by the desire to kiss her and feel her joy with his mouth.

Addam turned to Jaime and narrowed his eyes. “What are your intentions towards the lady?”

Jaime lifted one eyebrow. “Not appropriate for mixed company,” he drawled. Addam snickered before recovering himself. 

“You'll treat her well? Admire her daily?” 

“Daily, twice daily, whatever she'll allow,” Jaime said, and when he glanced at Brienne her hand was covering her face, her shoulders shaking a little with her barely contained laughter, and so deep red it had crept down her arms. 

“Do you have any answers that _aren't_ dirty?” Addam asked. 

“You mean how I intend to love her ferociously, until she gets sick of me?” he asked, his heart going soft at the glowing happiness in her eyes. 

“Much better.” Addam smiled and clapped Jaime on the back. “Congratulations,” he sincerely told them both. “Now we really do need to get to work. You and I are due at the simulator,” he told Brienne and she nodded before turning to Jaime to look at him hesitantly. _She wants a kiss_, he thought and he grinned and gave one to her, quick and hard. When he pulled back she was wearing her sweet smile. 

“Okay enough of that,” Addam said as Jaime shifted, ready to kiss her again. He put a hand on Jaime's shoulder and lightly pushed him away. “Go read your email or whatever it is you have to do. I'm taking your girlfriend.” 

“Be nice to her,” Jaime called out as they walked away. “And don't tell her any lies about me! I've got plenty of stories about you, too!” Addam flipped him off without turning around and Jaime laughed, the sound echoing in-between the bungalows.

* * *

With winter testing just over a week away, the entire team had their heads down and were hard at work, and though Brienne fielded many curious (Ygritte and Asha), satisfied (Podrick), heart-eyed (Lollys), and surprisingly smug (Arya and Bronn) looks through the afternoon, the team only had the time to spare for looks and little else. When she went to check in on her car after a long session with Syrio – who'd decided that her taking a day off meant she needed to work twice as hard the following day – Brienne found it surrounded by engineers and mechanics, poking and prodding, talking in quiet voices as they studied nearby computer monitors. Everyone looked more serious than they ever had, and Brienne pulled Bronn aside. 

“Everything all right?” she asked, worried. 

“Yes,” he said, though it was hesitant enough it only worried her more. 

“My car's going to be ready, isn't she?”

“Yes,” Bronn said more confidently. “The question is if she's going to be fast enough to keep up. Or even go above sixty.”

“_Sixty?_ Even the safety cars go faster than that!” 

“I'm well aware,” he grumbled. 

“What did you do?”

“We're making improvements, they're just taking awhile to improve. The car isn't your concern anymore, Chief, not like it was.” 

“I can help,” she protested. 

“Maybe. But didn't you hire all of us to do this for you? You're going to have to trust us to handle it, and the sooner the better. You've got plenty to keep you busy, starting with that race engineer of yours from what I hear,” he smirked. Brienne glared at him, but as ever Bronn was unmoved. “Go do your driver work, and leave us to the rest. We'll take care of your car, and you.” 

Brienne sighed, but she knew he was right; she had more than enough to keep her busy just with training and tape study and strategy planning. The garage wasn't her space anymore, the cockpit was, no matter how much more comfortable she still felt with a screwdriver instead of a steering wheel. 

As she and Jaime were packing up for the night, Pia knocked on the office door and poked her head in. “Hey,” she said, nervous, “do you two have a minute?” 

“Of course,” Brienne said, sharing a quick, curious glance with Jaime. 

“This feels really weird and invasive,” the younger woman said, wringing her hands together, shifting from foot to foot. “But I have to ask: are you two, like, publicly together now? Because back in King's Landing you said it was nothing, which was fine, it's your lives, but I've been monitoring social media for your name since the interview aired and there were some posts yesterday that said that you were seen at the ruins of Morne, uh,” Pia blushed, a pretty pink color to her cheeks, “kissing.” 

“We were,” Jaime said. “Quite a lot, actually.” 

Brienne shot him a dry look. “Our relationship has...evolved,” Brienne went with. “What are people saying? Or do I not want to know?”

“It's not too much right now, just unconfirmed reports from a couple who were visiting yesterday, too, that apparently recognized you. Kind of a mix of replies, mostly people not believing it,” she said apologetically. 

It wasn't surprising, but Brienne sighed anyway. “Is there something we should do?”

“Honestly?” Pia took a deep breath. “I think you should go all in on this. The interview played great with most fans. You've got your loud male voices being typically obnoxious, but lots of women watched and responded to what you said. _Lots_. We set up a separate email so people could send you messages, and we're going through it to weed out the serious ones, and Brienne,” Pia smiled, “a lot of people want to hear more from you. And quite a few people commented positively on your connection with Jaime. If you two are really together-together now, then we have to jump on that, bring it to the forefront, show everybody there's no reason to treat it disrespectfully. If you don't want to take new pictures, I have some photos already just from when we watched the WSN piece and today that I could send to Peck, we could have him do a small, fun interview about it: first impressions, when it started becoming something more, what your favorite thing to do together is.” Brienne looked at Jaime, whose answer was so obvious in his face that she rolled her eyes. “It's totally up to you, of course, but you're going to get asked about it in Sunspear either way, along with every other thing, and if we front-load it it should make it easier on you when you get there. We can prepare for it better, at least. So. What do you think?”

Brienne had thought about this moment when she'd driven over to Jaime's Sunday night, knowing that what was between them would never just stay on Tarth. She wished, still, there was some way to hide it from the glare of the cameras, to protect it from every reporter's nosy questioning, but she wasn't afraid anymore that their relationship would crumble under the weight of everyone else in the world's attention. They had been through too much, she trusted Jaime too completely, to even spare that outcome a thought. 

“What do you think?” she asked Jaime, a courtesy mostly for Pia, since Brienne was certain what his answer would be. 

“I'll do whatever you're comfortable with, but you know my opinions on hiding.” 

Brienne nodded and looked at Pia. “You're the expert here, we'll do as you suggest.” 

“Great!” Pia chirped, beaming. “Then come ready for photos tomorrow, and we'll do this right.”

* * *

That night, Selwyn drove them back home and they had a much less awkward dinner of leftover casserole. When they'd finished, they moved into the living room to talk over all the preparations left for testing, Jaime's plan for the car launch, and Pia's other suggestion of having their own mini “Meet the Team” segments focusing on the pit crew. 

“I love that idea,” Selwyn said. “It really seems like the team has come together.” 

“It does,” Brienne said, “although the car may not.” She explained what Bronn had told her, and Jaime nodded. 

“Bronn's right though, you've got to let them handle it.” 

“But what if I know what's broken? No one knows my car better than I do.” 

“You're a driver now, not a mechanic. You can't get stuck in the engine.”

“I feel so useless,” she admitted. 

Jaime grinned a little. “Hence why most drivers don't spend much time onsite during preseason work. We usually just pop in to get various measurements, meet the team, do some videos for social media. But we're not needed for the car. It's like we're foster parents: we'll take care of her when they're done, but they get to bring her to life.” 

“I didn't think this would be the hardest part.” 

“It won't be,” Jaime said, his mouth a serious, unsmiling line. 

Brienne frowned down at her hands. Just getting to here had been a constant fight surmounting obstacle after obstacle; it was disheartening to know that they were still only at the beginning of their battles, that the most difficult parts still lay ahead. 

Her father glanced at his watch and made a surprised sound. “Later than I thought,” he said. “I'm off to bed. Jaime, you're welcome to borrow, uh, if you're staying and you need...I mean if you'll be here in the morning and you need clothes-”

“He's got it dad, thanks,” Brienne mumbled, unsure of who was the most mortified. 

“Right, of course.” Selwyn hurried from the room and Brienne leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and buried her face in his hands. 

Jaime chuckled. “Could've been worse,” he said. “He could've offered to give us some of his condoms.”

“Oh gods!” she shrieked quietly, hitting him with a pillow while he laughed and failed to defend himself. “Don't make this entire situation worse.” 

Jaime straightened, his smile falling away again. “I need to tell you – I have to go to King's Landing for a few days. My new prosthetic is in, and I want to see Tyrion while I'm there, take a trip up to Harrenhal to see Dr. Tarly.” 

“When are you leaving?” 

“Day after next. I'll need the time to get everything done, and I'll still have to meet you in Sunspear for winter testing instead of coming back here.” 

They had only just gotten back together and already he had to leave again. Brienne tried to look unfazed but she knew she was failing terribly. It reminded her too much of last August, when they'd had their brief, bright time on Tarth before everything had slowly started falling apart. 

“I know,” he said softly, taking her hand. “I'd ask you to come with me, but you've got to stay focused. We're only at the beginning of this.” 

“Do you really think I can do it?”

“Yes. I really do.” His response was instant and firm. “So do all those people who came to work for you. And so will the fans, and the other drivers, once we get to testing. The waiting is the hardest part. Gods know I spent enough seasons an anxious mess just waiting to get wheels on the asphalt. I know how hard this is, and I also know you'll have plenty to keep you busy over the next few days, and once I do this then I won't need to leave again. Samwell said he'd do all phone calls with me instead of in-person meetings, and...” Jaime looked nervous. “I was going to let my lease go on my King's Landing apartment. It doesn't make sense to keep it when I'll be here for the rest of the year, and I can always get another one after that.” 

Brienne had spent as little time as possible thinking about anything past this season, but it hit her at once, the possibility of next year, and the years after that. She remembered Jaime on Crone's Day, and how much she'd wanted to see him stay. He was looking at her now like he expected her to tell him to hold onto his ties in King's Landing just in case. In case of what, she couldn't imagine. She had seen Jaime angry and hurting, lost and alone; she'd suffered his barbed words and fought back with her own; they had been desperately together and bitterly apart. They had been strangers and friends and lovers. The only thing they had left to try was the part that had been true already through so much of all the rest: being partners, and being in love. 

She took his hand and kissed his fingertips. “I think that sounds smart, and...and good.” 

“Can I stay with you again tonight?” he asked, his voice hushed. 

_You can stay with me forever_. “Yes,” she said out loud, drawing him to his feet. “But please don't wear my father's clothes tomorrow, I don't think I can take that.” 

Jaime's laugh shimmered like the stars as they walked home and to bed.


	28. February (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don't have to do this,” Brienne said quietly, barely audible over the bus engine. 
> 
> “Yes I do.” Jaime's jaw was too tight; his _skin_ was too tight. “I want to do this. For you and for me.” There were the flags whipping in the brisk wind, and the clouds were finally starting to thin out, so all the metal and glass of the mobile command centers everyone had spent yesterday setting up were gleaming. 
> 
> “How can I help?”
> 
> “Don't let go,” he whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes the chapter count has gone up. I've finally admitted to myself I'll need at least one chapter a month for all the months left, and February has one last part after this. So here we are. Hopefully we're at the final number! Heh. In the meantime, look at this rendering made of a real car that is ABSOLUTELY Brienne's car:  

> 
> Isn't she beautiful?? You can see [a couple more pictures here at my tumblr](https://ajoblotofjunk.tumblr.com/post/190718565917/oh-look-its-briennes-car).

It was cloudy when the bus full of Evenstar Racing crew arrived at the Sunspear track the day before the start of winter testing. Brienne had gone with them, even though she had no specific role for today as the driver. The day before was the domain of the Chief Mechanic, and a driver at loose ends would only get in the way, but Jaime was due to arrive later and she wasn't going to be left behind on Tarth for this anyway. She felt calmer with her crew around her, even as the crowd of media surged against the barriers that had been erected all around the spot Evenstar Racing would make their mobile home for the next two weeks. 

“Y-y-you okay?” Podrick asked from his seat next to her on the bus, as Brienne stared out at the cameras and microphones held at the ready, the journalists waiting for the first sign of anyone, but especially her, to emerge. 

“I think I'm going to be sick,” Brienne said, swallowing down a knot of bile. 

“Uh, B-bronn?” Pod called, his voice slightly panicked. “P-p-please help.” 

Bronn turned in his seat a few rows in front of them and sighed. “Out of the way,” he told Pod, and the two men exchanged seats. “Quite a crowd out there,” he said, peering over her shoulder. “You think they're here to talk to me about finally becoming a chief mechanic?”

“I can't do this.” 

“You don't really have a choice.”

Brienne tried to focus on her breathing but it reverberated ragged and loud in her head. There were quiet murmurs from around them, and no one had gotten off the bus. The crowd surged and then retreated again. 

“They're going to say I shouldn't be here.”

“That's only because you haven't driven yet.” 

“They're going to ask about me and Jaime.”

“If you were worried about that, then you probably shouldn't have fucked him.” That did drag Brienne's attention away from the reporters and Bronn lifted his brows. “I'm right and you know it.” 

He was and she did, but she didn't have to like it. 

“You did the right thing. After that WSN interview, they were gonna ask about you and Jaime anyway,” he continued. “Now that you've done that article with Peck, just point them to that and ignore the rest; you don't owe any of them a single answer about anything. You could just stare in silence for half an hour and no one could do anything to you so say what you want and get the fuck out again. The only thing you signed on to do was show up, and drive. Everything else is your choice.” 

Part of her agreement with IAF was the standard clause that she'd make herself available to approved media outlets through the season and that if they selected her for the pre-race scrum she would show up. But there'd been no promises about what she'd say when she was there. She touched her fingers to the window. More journalists came running in from other garages, joining the crowd. They would jump on the first person who stepped out of the bus, no matter who it was. Brienne felt her stomach flip over one last time and then settle. It had to be her, so she could distract them enough that her crew could get inside. None of them had joined her team just to be assaulted by cameras and rude questions. 

Brienne motioned for Bronn to get up and she climbed out of her seat. “I'll go first,” she said, taking a deep breath. “The rest of you use the opportunity to get into the garage and get to work. Bronn will direct you where to go and what to do once you're safely inside.” 

Gathering all the confidence she could – repeating _I can do this_ to herself over and over, building steel into her spine – Brienne passed Sandor in the driver's seat and exchanged a quick, knowing look with him before she stepped off of the bus into almost instant pandemonium. The sound hit her first, a roaring wave that was mostly her name shouted in varying degrees of desperation, with a madness-inducing drumbeat of shutter clicks underneath. People waved their arms, their microphones, their hats and random towels and pieces of paper, all trying to get her to turn their way first. She looked for Peck somewhere in the throng, but she couldn't see him; he was so skinny he'd probably gotten shoved aside long ago. Just off to the side she caught sight of Melisandre's bright red hair, and though they had nowhere near the trust Brienne felt for Peck, the fact that she'd left Brienne's takedown speech about women's leagues in the interview made her seem less threatening than any of these other hungry eyes. 

Brienne lifted her chin and closed the last distance from the bus to the journalists, stopping several feet away. She looked at Melisandre but couldn't get her voice to work against the rising tide of demands for her attention. The sound was impossibly loud in her head, crowding out her ability to think and Brienne tried to take a breath, her chest tight, constricting her. Then, like an oar held out to a drowning person, Bronn and Podrick came up on her right side, Arya and Ygritte on her left. At Brienne's back she felt other bodies, turned her head a little to see the crew had filed off the bus and all come to stand behind her, her own small army to help face the one in front. 

Her heart wobbled, unbalanced from the unasked for support, and she glanced down at Arya. 

“Maybe they'll ask _me_ some questions,” the other woman said, her smile a dangerous slice across her face. 

Brienne's chest relaxed and she gulped down a huge breath, felt a matching grin grow slowly on her own lips before she turned it on Melisandre. “You first,” she said and as though she'd shouted instead of simply spoken the words, the crowd quieted. 

“Welcome to your first winter testing as a driver,” Melisandre said. 

“I'm happy to be here.” 

“It seems like you hid some important things from me at our interview a few weeks ago,” Melisandre continued.

“I answered all of your questions honestly.” 

Melisandre smirked. “You did. But you didn't tell me I wasn't asking the most important one. You and your race engineer are a couple.” 

“I'm aware of our status,” Brienne said, trying to deflect. Bronn and Arya both shifted their stances in an almost identical manner, folding their arms across their chests, their legs planted wide. 

“You told Peck you got together recently.” 

“It's all in the article,” Brienne said, taking Bronn's advice. 

“Not all of it,” Melisandre said, her tone weighty, and Brienne felt a shiver of unease. “I have photographs that suggest you've been an item since last summer.” 

The noise went up again, shouted questions from those nearby, people in the middle and back trying to figure out what was being said. 

Brienne swallowed hard and cast about for something to say, aware that her every additional second of silence was as good as admitting it, but not sure how, or even if she wanted, to describe for public consumption everything that had happened between her and Jaime. She didn't wonder how Melisandre had gotten the photos; there was only one way, one person, who could have given them to her. 

Bronn leaned forward. “Unless you have pictures of them actually having sex, then you don't have shit.” 

“I think they come fairly close.” She wasn't even looking at Bronn, just staring straight at Brienne with her all-knowing eyes. 

“It's none of your business though, is it?” Arya said. “If you don't have a question about racing, fuck off.” 

“Arya,” Brienne said quietly, but Melisandre frowned and looked down at the younger woman and it freed Brienne to divert her attention to the next journalist. “What's your question?” she asked him desperately. 

“Is everything ready for car launch tomorrow?” 

She looked at Bronn, who nodded a little too enthusiastically, and Brienne felt her stomach drop, but she plastered what she hoped was a believable smile on her face. “We're looking forward to it,” Brienne said. 

“Brienne,” someone else shouted a few people down, and she glanced the man's way. “Why is Jaime not here with you? Trouble in paradise?”

Brienne glared at him. “He had some things to attend to in King's Landing, he'll be here tonight.” 

“Will you be sharing a room?” the man asked. 

“How is that any of your business?” she snapped. 

“Are you worried that being lovers and coworkers will be a huge strain on your relationship?” someone else asked. 

“No.” There was a pause and when the reporter realized she wasn't offering more another woman jumped in. 

“Is Jaime's family embarrassed that he's sleeping with his new boss?” 

Brienne gaped at the woman, at a total loss how to respond to that, when she heard Peck's familiar voice. “Ms Tarth,” he called, shoving his way aggressively through the wall of elbows. She turned her attention gratefully to him. “Can you tell us what your goals are for Evenstar Racing's first winter testing ever?”

She exhaled and smiled a little. “I'd love to,” she said. She rattled off an answer, and then indulged another racing-related question from him, and that seemed to break the group's focus on her and Jaime and the last few questions she took were all what she would have expected for any driver. After she answered a question on what her pre-race routine was going to be – “I don't know yet,” she'd answered honestly, “I'll have to try something and see how well I do” – Brienne thanked them and turned away, waving silently even as they yelled and shouted for more. From somewhere in the crowd there came a bitter, unfamiliar voice that said, “he had to be crippled to fuck _her_” and she felt Bronn and Arya both glance at her to see if she heard. Brienne just stared straight ahead and was mostly just glad Jaime wasn't there. He would not have let that go. Her crew flowed around her like a pack of bodyguards, and they escorted her into the garage, Willem slamming the door tightly shut behind them. 

“What the fuck,” Arya said when it was just the crew in the garage, the cameras still peering through the window, photographing them all staring at each other in shock. 

“We knew it would be difficult,” Brienne said tiredly. “Thanks for standing with me.” 

“We're a team,” Willem said, glaring at the journalists out the window. “We wouldn't let you suffer that alone.” 

“Y-yeah!” Pod said, nodding fiercely. 

“All right,” Bronn said. “This is all very touching but we have a lot of work to get the car ready for launch tomorrow. Stop patting yourselves on the back and let's get to it.” He smoothly directed the team until everyone was darting around, and then he sauntered to Brienne where she stood off to the side at a loss, trying to hide from the cameras behind the nearest shelves. 

“You okay, Chief?”

“That was tougher than I thought,” she admitted. 

“Having regrets?”

Brienne looked around at her team as they buzzed and hurried and chattered with each other, thought of Jaime heading to Sunspear even now, and she shook her head. “Not at all.” 

Bronn grinned at her. “Good. Since you've got nothing to do until Lannister gets here, you want to help me review some of these intake numbers?” 

“Honestly, that sounds like just what I want,” she said, smiling.

* * *

Jaime glared at the line waiting for rides from the airport to the hotel and wished he could have had Sandor come pick him up instead of trying to valiantly not use the man for exactly what they'd hired him for. He blamed Brienne for that, and her insistence that Sandor didn't always have to be at their beck and call. Of course he didn't, Jaime wasn't a tyrant, but he could have used a little more beck from Sandor tonight. His flight had already been delayed thanks to mechanical problems and all he'd had for dinner was the stale ham and cheese sandwich the harried flight attendant had shoved in his face. Jaime had texted Brienne through the whole miserable delay, and though she'd been sympathetic he could tell she was tired of him complaining. 

By the time his ride dropped him off in front of the hotel the Evenstar team was staying at, it was too late for dinner, the small restaurant just off the lobby already closed for the evening. At least the media had given up waiting for his arrival. Brienne had reported they'd been camped out there when the team had returned from the track, shouting as many inane questions at Brienne and the others as they had at the welcoming scrum. Even with the influx of Lannister Corp's LST money, Evenstar was operating on a razor thin budget for anything that did not explicitly have to do with the car, and Jaime had hoped that by staying a distance away from the luxury hotels the rest of the constructors used they'd save money and gain privacy, but it looked like they were only going to achieve the former. He shifted his luggage in his hand while he waited for the elevator, amusing himself by counting the number of flowers in the extremely over-the-top artwork on the wall in front of him. The carpet and walls and elevators were clean but plain, which was the best description for the entire place. Shireen had booked the team the whole top floor at least, though the view was mostly just the other middling buildings in this part of Sunspear. Jaime rolled his luggage down the hall, looking for the suite at the end. Everything seemed so pedestrian, and he was surprised he cared about that as much as he did, until he stopped caring at all when Brienne opened the door to their room on his knock. 

She was wearing pajama shorts that exposed plenty of her freckled, muscular thighs, a loose t-shirt she'd obviously had for years, and a wide, big-toothed smile he immediately returned. 

“Hi,” she said happily. 

“Hi.” He wanted to swoop her up into his arms but his hands were full so instead they grinned at each other for a moment before Brienne took his luggage and his hand and tugged them both into the room, kissing him briefly but warm. It hadn't taken much to convince her that they should share a room when they were on travel, though she'd been unable to ask Shireen to change the reservations herself, her solid strength failing her in the face of that particular embarrassment. Jaime, of course, had been happy to do it for her. 

“I'd ask how your flight went, but I don't want to set you off again,” she said as she rolled his luggage into the closet. Jaime set the carrying case for his prosthetic down on the table and took off his jacket and when he turned back to Brienne she was staring, openly curious, at the new, futuristic-looking metal and plastic contraption at the end of his arm. 

“What do you think?” he asked, holding it up. The fingers wiggled a little at his command. 

“You look like a sexy cyborg,” she said. 

He grinned wickedly at her. “I _am_ a love machine,” he said and she groaned as though in pain. 

“I can't believe I missed you, with jokes like that.” She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. 

Jaime buried his face in her neck, kissed her pulse, the bottom curve of her jaw. “You missed me?”

“Every day,” she said, her breath hot on his skin. He used his new fingers to lift up the back of her loose t-shirt, used his real fingers to slide up the middle of her back and up to her neck until his arm was wrapped up in the fabric. “Especially today.” 

His hand stilled at the nape of her neck, and he rubbed his cheek against hers. “I saw the team arrival on WSN. That was intense, you did well.” 

“You know what the photos are that Melisandre mentioned. Where she got them.” It wasn't a question, but it didn't need to be. Of course he knew. “She'll probably post them.” 

“Are you okay with that?”

“I have to be,” she sighed. “Pia's coming to the garage tomorrow so we can talk about what to do when she does. What about you, will you be okay?”

He nuzzled into her ear. “It can only do my reputation good for people to know I managed to convince you to have sex with me even sooner,” he said, smiling against her temple. 

“They're already looking for evidence we're going to break up,” she mumbled. 

“Ignore it. Halfway through the season someone will say you're fucking Addam if you're within ten feet of each other. I don't care what they say, as long as you're not actually fucking Addam.”

“I prefer men who are part robot,” she said, pulling back to search his eyes and she bit her lip, looking shy. He kissed the small indent gently. “This is going to sound really pathetic.” 

“Tell me anyway; I can't be the only pathetic one in this relationship.” 

Brienne huffed a laugh and kissed him tenderly, her lips questing over his, the tip of her tongue tasting him. He unwound his arm from her shirt and brought it up to her face, running his thumb over the broad curve of her cheek. 

“I'm waiting,” he murmured against her lips, felt them pull into a bashful smile. 

“I slept with one of your shirts while you were gone,” she admitted, and Jaime broke the kiss so he could catch sight of her whole face turning red. 

“You _missed_ me,” he said, delighted, and she shoved him a little. 

“I already told you that.” 

“You haven't told me the most important part though,” he said. 

“I love you,” she said immediately, breathing it into him. Jaime shivered, the words still as delicate and fresh as new spring flowers. He gathered them to himself with the same care. 

“I love you, too,” he said, too serious, but being able to even say it was a bright miracle. “More than I did yesterday, and the day before.” 

Brienne flushed, her eyes dropping away from his. “You say that every time,” she mumbled, so adorably shy his heart ached. 

“I mean it every time,” he said sincerely. 

“You don't have to keep saying it.” 

“Do you not want me to?”

Brienne worried at her lip. “No, it's just...I know at some point all of this won't be so new and intense, and I don't want you to say it then because you think you have to.” 

Jaime couldn't comprehend not feeling like Brienne was the best part of waking up in the morning, but he knew she wouldn't believe that. Not yet. She'd gone too long being ignored, or worse, by almost everyone but her father. He wasn't sure he would even have the right words to give her to convince her, so he brushed his knuckles along her stomach under the fall of her shirt and tried to use his body instead. 

“You know,” he said conversationally, “I was actually going to ask if you touched yourself while wearing my shirt.” The worry disappeared as she leaned into him, leaving a trail of wet kisses on his jaw. He tugged her t-shirt up until she grabbed the hem herself and helped pull it off, exposing her ocean of freckles and her flushed bare chest to him. Jaime drew his thumb over one firm nipple and then the other and her mouth opened on a gasp. 

“Next time,” she promised, her fingers opening his pants until his length dropped into her hot, strong hand and he trembled against her. 

“Bed,” he directed, and they shuffled and stumbled to the king-sized bed, nicer and more comfortable than any of the low-rent places they'd been with each other last year. Brienne yanked off her pajama shorts and underwear and Jaime pulled her on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips as, still almost fully clothed, he thrust up into her. She rode him gloriously naked, her arousal soaking into his pants. For months this position had been his favorite fantasy, and the reality of it was even more intense: her weight and strength pressing him into the bed, his hips gripped between her thighs, her big hands spanning the whole width of his chest. Brienne had gotten more comfortable with being on top, knew he liked the dig of her fingers into his shoulders, how she decided who controlled the pace. She was letting him lead now, lifting herself up enough he could drive into her as feverishly as he needed, and he was burning up with it tonight. Even a few days away had been too many; her absence at his side a physical thing. 

Jaime kept his prosthetic hand loose on her hip, the fingers twitching against her while he used his left to slip between their bodies and bring her to a gasping climax that she tried to smother even as she threw her head back to the ceiling, her neck and torso impossibly long before him. While she pulsed and pulled at him he ran his hand up her thigh, the dip of her navel, between her breasts until his hand was wrapped around the back of her neck, pulling her body down against his. Brienne rolled her hips once, twice, a third time and he was alight, moaning his release into her eager mouth. 

“I missed you, too,” he panted and she wrapped her limbs around him, burrowing into his embrace while he twitched and pulsed a last time inside her. 

They lay entwined until Jaime started drifting to sleep, lulled by Brienne's weight and warmth on top of him. 

“How _was_ your trip?” she mumbled and Jaime laughed a little, her body lifting with the movement of his own. 

“Besides the miserable flight, it was good. I had a good session with Sam, I got this,” he tapped his prosthetic fingers against her hip, “and I talked with Tyrion.” 

“Any news?”

“Not yet. Father is in a foul mood all the time, but that's not unexpected. Tyrion says we're safe from retaliation for the time being. That my father mocks me constantly with the rest of the family but as far as he can tell it stops at words.” 

“I'm sorry.” She kissed his temple and he closed his eyes, breathing her in. “Is Tyrion doing okay?”

Jaime sighed and pressed his lips into her shoulder. “He seems so. But my brother is the best of all of us Lannisters at hiding his true feelings.”

“Where are you ranked amongst Lannisters at hiding your feelings?” she teased.

“Clear at the bottom.” He pinched hers and she squeaked adorably. 

Brienne moved a little as though she were trying to slide off of him and his arms tightened around her, holding her in place. “I'm too heavy,” she protested. 

“No you're not. I can take your weight.” 

“You should change and get comfortable,” she said softly near the top of his head. “Big day tomorrow.” 

“You're going to do great.” 

“We'll see. But at least you'll be next to me this time, so you can answer the questions.” 

“Should I tell them we're having a threesome with Bronn?” 

“Jaime,” she said, amusement thick in her tone, and he kissed her from neck to shoulder. 

“Would change up the coverage.”

“So will launching the car,” she laughed. “Take off your cyborg hand and then we can sleep and you can deal with your wrinkled pants in the morning.” 

Jaime moved his lower half a little, felt the dampness against his center, and smirked. “I think wrinkles are going to be the least of my worries.” But he rolled out of the bed, kissing her hand before letting her go to take his shoes and socks and pants off. He padded over to the desk and carefully unstrapped his prosthetic. “You're really okay with the new hand?” he asked as he set it in the case. 

“Of course.” She came up behind him, laid her hands on his shoulders and rubbed her thumbs into the muscles there, easing away the day's travels and tensions. 

“I was thinking of not wearing it tomorrow,” he said, closing his eyes and letting his head hang forward to give her better access. She was such a marvelous mix of tenderness and strength, he could feel his muscles giving way underneath the pressure of her care. 

“If you want, that's fine, too.” 

“You wouldn't mind? There will be a lot of photos and I don't want the stump to ruin them.” 

Her hands went still before she gently urged him to face her, frowning with concern. She looked so worried for him that his heart swelled almost painfully in his chest. There had been almost no one in his life who had cared about his comfort as much as their own, and he still couldn't entirely understand how he'd gotten lucky enough for Brienne to feel that for him now. “Nothing about you could ruin any of this,” she said seriously. “You have to know that.” Brienne scraped her thumbnail along the bristles on his jaw and Jaime shivered. “You could put a plastic flamingo on the end of your arm and I wouldn't care.” 

“What about a hook?” he asked, needing to leaven the mood before he did something truly pathetic. 

“It might get confiscated for being a weapon, but I'd consider it.” 

“I could get a dull one for the bedroom,” he murmured, leaning up to kiss her chin. “We could play pirates.” 

“I don't think you appreciate Tarth's complicated relationship with pirates.” 

“Even better,” he said, sliding his stump along the still bare skin of her chest, gratified when she gasped a little in pleasure. “I can be the dashing invader and you can be the fair maid I steal from the shore.” 

She snorted. “More like the captain of a naval ship protecting the island.” 

Jaime felt a tremor of want roll through him and his still-soft cock twitched with interest. “Only if you'll tie me up,” he whispered into the delicate shell of her ear, and the sound she made was half needy whimper, half laugh. 

“Are you surrendering already? What kind of a pirate are you?”

“A naughty one,” he said, sucking indelicately at her neck. “Help me take off the rest of my clothes and I'll show you.”

* * *

They arrived in the lobby together the next morning, holding hands as much for strength as just because Jaime liked touching her and she seemed to like it, too. He took a breath and squeezed her hand when the elevator doors opened, readying them both for the media that were sure to be waiting. But when they stepped out there were only some of Evenstar's crew hanging around, talking quietly. 

“Ms. Tarth,” a woman in a mildly expensive suit said from behind the front desk, smiling at them. She said something to the man next to her and then came towards them, her hands held out in welcome. “Thank you for staying with us at Bright Hotel! I was thrilled when your assistant made the arrangements.” 

Brienne glanced at Jaime and he shrugged a little, let Brienne's hand go so she could shake the older woman's, and then shook it himself with his left hand. He'd decided to leave the prosthetic in their room for today.

“Welcome to you, too, Mr. Lannister. My name is Alyse Ladybright, I own the hotel. I just wanted you both to know that as long as you stay here you won't be bothered by those pesky reporters. I kicked all of them out to the street first thing this morning when they started harassing my employees trying to find out what room you were in.” She glared out of the entry doors at where, presumably, she'd exiled the media. “I won't have that kind of disruption here; the Bright Hotel is a place for weary travelers to escape, even if it isn't as luxurious as some.”

“It's been lovely,” Brienne said immediately, smiling at the woman. “We appreciate the courtesy.”

“It's basic humanity,” Alyse insisted, but she looked pleased, her chin lifting a little. Jaime didn't blame her; he felt like he was a five-year old given a lollipop anytime Brienne thanked him for doing anything. There was something so calm and _good_ about her it shone from inside, made people want to see her big blue eyes crinkled warmly in their direction. He'd seen person after person fall to her unwitting charms, himself hardest of all. 

“Though I'm also a huge fan,” Alyse went on, “and I've been following you two since last season. I always wondered if there was something more going on there.” She grinned at them like they were all in on the secret, and Jaime grinned back. 

“It took me months to convince her there was,” he said, and Alyse laughed delightedly while Brienne blushed and gently elbowed him. 

“Well as long as you're at Bright Hotel you'll be well-cared for and safe from the prying cameras. I just wanted to assure you I won't be bought, and neither will any of my employees. They know if they are, there will be all seven hells to pay.” 

Money would talk more loudly at the other places they would stay, though, and Jaime filed that consideration away to discuss with Shireen once they were back home on Tarth. It wasn't just his father that would try to get some sort of compromising photos of them; the media would want them just for themselves and the viewer traffic it would draw. Jaime was grateful for yet another reason that he and Brienne weren't still trying to hide their feelings from each other; with the heavy shadow of media that was sure to follow them everywhere they went off Tarth, they would have had to keep their distance for months and even then there would still be plenty of rumors and paparazzi hiding in alleys. Now he could kiss her and hope that they caught it.

The three of them chatted loosely about the upcoming season until the rest of the crew had filtered down – including Podrick hauling a still dripping wet Willem out of the elevator with an annoyed glare – and Sandor pulled up in front of the hotel with the bus, the looping circle and star logo of Evenstar Racing emblazoned on the side. 

As they all filed out of the hotel into the unusually cold Dornish morning, Jaime heard the shouts and cameras from the street and he gave them a jaunty wave and yelled, “Shame it's not warmer today!” 

Behind him in line as they shuffled on the bus, Bronn snorted. “You're gonna be impossible this season, aren't you?” he grumbled. “I didn't realize you could be more obnoxious when you're happy than as a miserable, arrogant jerk.” 

“Surely I'm still an arrogant jerk,” Jaime said dryly. 

“Yeah probably,” Bronn mused and Jaime snickered.

He took the front row seat with Brienne, their thighs pressed together, as she stared anxiously out the window, her eyes darting over the faces of the media assembled outside. Her brow creased and then creased again, a trembling collection of worried lines. 

“It will be better once you're in the car,” he said just for her ears. “It always is.” 

She glanced at him but she didn't look soothed. “What about for you? You don't have a car to hide in.”

Jaime didn't know how to respond to that. He hadn't been near a track since his accident, had watched as little racing as he could reasonably get away with, although he knew that would all have to change once they turned their attention fully towards the Grands Prix ahead of them. But there had been so much going on that he'd managed to put aside that part of today: that he would be stepping foot back on the asphalt for the first time since he'd lost his hand. 

Samwell had brought it up in therapy when they'd seen each other on Friday and Jaime had blown it off, convinced it would be no big deal. As the bus rumbled up to the achingly familiar Sunspear track, his left hand clenched into a tight fist, and his missing right hand felt like it did the same. Brienne brushed her fingers over his knuckles, enveloped his hand in hers. 

“You don't have to do this,” she said quietly, barely audible over the bus engine. 

“Yes I do.” His jaw was too tight, his _skin_ was too tight. “I want to do this. For you and for me.” There were the flags whipping in the brisk wind, and the clouds were finally starting to thin out, so all the metal and glass of the mobile command centers everyone had spent yesterday setting up were gleaming. 

“How can I help?”

“Don't let go,” he whispered, unclenching his hand to grab hers tightly. It anchored him against the grasping quicksand of panic. 

The bus pulled up and squealed to a stop, the engine chugging off. They were parked near their mobile command center, but there was another crowd of reporters waiting eagerly for the Evenstar Racing crew's arrival that they'd have to navigate before they would be safely inside. The Evenstar garage had been set at the very end of the line, where Jaime expected it would be all season, no one having had enough time to prepare for another constructor in place. Given the sheer number of people crowded around it, it was probably for the best. They wouldn't be much less of a draw as the season progressed. He just hoped they'd have pit garages and gantries available at every track. 

The previous last-of-the-line constructor had been Dothrak Racing, and their crews filed out of the garage to peer curiously at the Evenstar bus. 

“Who's going first, Chief?” Bronn called from a few rows back. 

Brienne looked at Jaime. "I can go alone," she offered and he shook his head. 

"We go together." He exhaled shakily before releasing her hand so they could get out of the seats. 

“Jaime and I,” Brienne said after one last confirming look. “Let me go in front,” she murmured in his ear, and then kissed him softly on the cheek. Brienne had taken less quickly to the public displays of affection, and the gentleness of it now soothed him. 

“Let's do this,” he said with more confidence than he felt. 

They emerged from the bus – Brienne first, then Jaime – to an explosion of sound, and he watched the transformation come over Brienne, the way her jaw firmed, her body straightened and seemed to grow even larger as she strode just a step ahead and in front of him like a shield. She seemed to be heading directly for Melisandre, and Jaime had to admire the tactic. 

“Brienne,” Melisandre said as they walked up. “And Jaime Lannister, here at last.” 

“I didn't realize you missed me so much,” he said, casting back to the confident, casually uncaring man he had been for the cameras in his past. It was easier than he'd expected to pull that cloak back on to hide the nerves and fear, to drown out the quiet ghost of the sound of crunching metal and bone. 

“You've always given us the most _interesting_ news to report, how could we not miss you?” 

“Did you have a question or did you just come to flirt with me? As you're well aware, I'm happily taken now,” he said, linking his fingers with Brienne's. The camera shutters went wild. 

“Would you like to comment on the item that Brienne and I talked about yesterday?” For reasons Jaime couldn't imagine, she hadn't posted the pictures, though it seemed she wasn't willing to just let it go, either. 

“I would not,” he said falsely cheerful, before turning to Myles Manwoody. “What do you have for us, Myles?” 

“Uh,” he gathered himself, caught off-guard by being called so quickly. “How's it feel being back at the track?”

“It feels surreal,” Jaime said truthfully. He could afford to show that part of himself at least. “But I'm looking forward to helping the team have a truly remarkable year.” 

“You think a rookie driver for a brand new constructor with limited funds can compete in this field?”

“I think _this_ rookie driver can. Mark my words, she'll not only get a podium spot at least once this season, she'll get first.” Brienne stiffened next to him, her hand tense in his. 

“That's a tall order,” Myles said. “No pun intended.”

“She's up to it. Peck!” Jaime said, genuinely delighted to see the younger man. 

“Hi, Mr. Lannister. Can you tell us what you'll be doing differently this season as race engineer instead of driver?”

Jaime held onto his loose smile and looser confidence, barely. “Well I'll start by not driving,” he said, and a few of the reporters laughed. “But my focus will be the same as it was when I was driving: a single-minded goal of setting the team up for success.”

“Aren't you afraid the bad blood with your father will interfere with that?” Melisandre asked bitingly. 

“What bad blood?” he asked coolly. 

“He hired the man that took your hand.” 

Jaime swallowed. “Vargo Hoat didn't take my hand, he sabotaged my tire. Dumb fucking luck took my hand.” 

“Still, Tywin Lannister has all final hiring decisions for Lannister Corp. Do you not blame him at all for his part in it? For not knowing his own nephew was involved in illegal gambling?” 

“He donated Lannister Corp's LST to us, how much bad blood could there be?” Jaime retorted but he sounded too defensive, his voice too sharp. 

“Sounds like it could be bribery for keeping quiet,” she suggested and next to him Brienne inhaled abruptly. 

“That's enough,” Brienne said, the closest she had ever sounded to snarling. “We're done.” 

She dropped his hand and Jaime followed after her, watching the anger running clear in every familiar line of her body. When they'd made it into the garage she kept walking until they were alone in the even quieter paddock, the rest of the crew staying behind to get to work. 

“At least they're not asking about our relationship,” he said lightly when she stopped in the empty space, her hands flexing at her sides.

“This isn't funny, Jaime.”

“I didn't say it was. But you looking like you want to attack her just for asking the question isn't going to help anything, either.” 

Brienne glared at him and he lifted his eyebrows, waiting. 

“Why did you tell them I'd take a podium this year? And first place!” 

“Because I believe you will.” 

“The last time I checked my car couldn't even beat the safety car out there.” 

“Have you checked today? I'm sure Bronn has it fixed.” 

“You don't understand,” she grumbled, and Jaime felt annoyance flare through him. 

“What part don't I understand, Brienne? What it's like to have everyone's expectations on my shoulders? Or the part where the media haunts your every footstep, judging every word out of your mouth?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, but couldn't quite meet his eyes. “I have an entire _gender_ to worry about letting down.” 

“No you don't.” When she did look at him, ready to argue, he frowned. “You don't,” he repeated. “You have you and your team to worry about letting down. That's it. The only way you could let down women as an amorphous mass is if you didn't even try, and that's not you. Do you know how many times Pia gushed about how brave you were? We'll launch your car in a couple of hours and then we'll get you on the track to start testing and Melisandre's questions and this weight you think you have to carry won't matter.”

Brienne sat down in a nearby chair, her body slumping as she rested her elbows on the table. “I was wrong, about the rest of it, but this part you really don't understand. If I mess this up, I didn't mess it up because I was me. I messed it up because I'm a woman.”

“That's not-”

“That's how they'll see it. They'll say the stress was too much, even for Big Brienne, that surely it would take down even a normal woman.” Jaime had multiple issues with that statement, but he bit his tongue; now that she'd said it he could already imagine the headlines, the way they'd lay the blame at the feet of her being a woman and not just a rookie. “And now even if I make it through every race, if I get even a single point but don't get a podium finish, they'll think I failed. I can't have them expecting that of me, Jaime. It's too much.” 

He pulled out the chair next to her, rested his hand on her knee. “I didn't realize; I'm sorry. I thought my confidence in you would help.” 

“It does, mostly.” She turned her head a little, peeking up at him from behind the curtain of blond hair that had fallen over her face. “But you dream too big for me sometimes.” 

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Maybe you just don't dream big enough.” 

“I suspect somewhere between us is a happy middle,” she said wryly, and he felt his shoulders relax at the light in her beautiful eyes, brighter and bluer than her car. 

“Then we can pull each other towards it.” He kissed her, tender and sweet. “I am sorry for making this harder. I'll try to contain my pronouncements in the future. Next time I'll just promise we'll get all four wheels on correctly.” 

Brienne snorted. “Some days I think even that might be too much.” She hesitated a moment, leaned closer. “How are you holding up?” she asked.

“Better than that first minute. I think at least half of it was surprise I was reacting at all. I assumed since I wouldn't be driving it wouldn't be difficult to be here.”

He watched her gather herself, a slow drawing up of her willpower and he knew what she was going to say even before it left her mouth. “You don't have to be my race engineer.” 

“You really think I'm going to let someone else be there with you your first year in Formula 1?”

“If it's too painful to be on the track, of course I do.”

Jaime felt his heart expand yet again, like it filled with love for her a little more with every beat. “It would never be more painful than leaving you to do this on your own.” 

“I'm not on my own. You got me a whole team!”

“I did,” he said, smiling. “And I intend to lead them. Here, by your side, on the track. It's not too bad when we're busy. The interviews, for instance, took up enough attention that I stopped thinking about it. It'll be the same on race weekends. I won't be spending any of my free time at the track, but I can do the work. I want to do the work.” 

“All right,” she said, accepting him. “If that changes, you have to tell me.”

“Deal.” 

“Come on, let's go see what they've done to my car.” 

He grabbed her hand as she stood, and she looked back curiously at him. “We could also stay here and make out a little bit,” he offered, bringing her fingertips to his lips one by one. “Give them time to get settled.” 

“That seems unwise,” she said, but her breath hitched when he sucked the tip of her thumb into his mouth. 

“I scaled down; I _was_ going to suggest we have sex.”

Brienne laughed a little, curled her free hand in his hair and he leaned into it, the way her nails scratched along his scalp. “Annoying,” she murmured. 

“Stubborn,” he grinned. 

But she sat back down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for next chapter when there will be actual driving in this racing fic! Hee.


	29. February (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unlike Jaime's driver room, the walls of hers were still almost entirely bare, the seating simple and unimpressive. The only decoration was a framed photo of her father and Galladon from a few years before he died, which she touched briefly like a talisman. Her father, as promised, was not coming to watch her drive, was insistent he couldn't bear it, and it helped to see his and her brother's smiling faces now. She hoped to fill the rest of the space as the season went on, but she had wanted to start with a clean slate. Laid out along the small couch was her jumpsuit and safety gear, and she put it on as her stomach turned in a nervous circle. 
> 
> The shape of the Evenstar suits were the same as any other, but Sansa's use of the team colors and logo were lovely, and she'd hidden barely-visible suns and moons on the inner fabric near Brienne's heart that made her feel like her father and her whole island were with her. With the necklace Jaime had given her for Crone's Day nestled under it all, she felt wrapped in their love and protection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am extremely jet-lagged, so have the new chapter early since time means nothing to me anymore. 😁

The car was in better shape than Brienne had feared, and by the time she and Jaime emerged from the paddock – and received a number of slyly amused looks from their crew when they did – Bronn was confident they'd be ready for launch. 

Which was good, because Lannister Corp had decided they were holding their car launch at the same time, and Brienne didn't want to have to postpone Evenstar's and give Tywin Lannister even the smallest satisfaction thinking it was because they were afraid of him. 

One of the new rules this season was that protective screens were no longer allowed in front of the garages any longer; to “encourage transparency with the fans” was the given reason, but Brienne suspected it was a demon's deal with the media, that they'd complained they couldn't see into every single second of a team's life. For launch purposes it meant that their car had already been photographed as the crew had worked on it in the shadows of the garage, but that didn't stop the swell of onlookers growing bigger by the minute as launch time grew near. Even crews from other teams were there, and she caught sight of several drivers wandering over as well, including Robb Stark, who walked straight past the cordons and into the garage. 

Jaime went tall and straight next to her, a not-entirely-welcoming smile on his face. “The Young Wolf,” he said when Robb was near. 

“Kingslayer,” Robb said without a hint of malice. He held out his hand. “It's good to see you at the track again.” 

Brienne watched Jaime process a hundred emotions in a second before shaking Robb's hand. The cameras just outside clicked wildly. “I never thanked you personally for what you said last year,” Jaime said gruffly, “what you tried to do.” 

Robb nodded. “It was the truth. When we found out why the accident happened...” he looked genuinely angry. “It's good that you didn't stay away. And it seems that you've brought a new challenger for me.” He turned to Brienne then, appraising her in a way that was entirely non-sexual, and he smiled a little as they shook hands. “Strong grip.”

“You too,” she said, and his smile went wide and genuine for a fleeting moment. His thick hair gleamed red-brown in the lights, and she envied him his stocky build for a moment, a much more accommodating height for the cramped cockpits of an F1 car. 

“I saw you run some test laps last year. You've got a good feel for the road. I look forward to seeing what you can do, from my mirrors of course.” 

Jaime huffed, but Brienne smiled. “Only when I'm lapping you,” she said sweetly, and Robb's eyes lit with amusement. 

“Keep that spirit up, Tarth. You're going to need it. Not everyone is as ready for change as others.”

“Who?” Jaime asked in a low voice. 

Robb glanced at him. “Connington for starters, though I'm sure that's no surprise to you. Ramsay and his new teammate; Nightfort and Kraken teams. Everyone else seems mostly on the fence. They'll be looking for you to prove yourself.” 

“We're prepared for that,” Jaime said. 

“Come see me at first weigh-in,” Robb told Brienne. “I'll make sure you don't get lost. Every rookie needs a little looking after the first time and I hope you'll let me help you, since you don't have a teammate to do it.” 

She nodded, moved. “That's very kind of you.” 

“Can't beat the good publicity, either,” he said. He clapped her on the shoulder and the cameras went off again and Brienne smiled uncomfortably. Whether his concern was sincere or not, she would be on her own in some of the driver spaces once the season started, and having someone on her side could only help, regardless of why he was doing it. 

Petyr Baelish appeared at the edge of the garage, his gaze sweeping over the three of them with a banked interest. Robb shot him a disdainful look. 

“That's my cue to leave,” he said. “See you on the track.” He brushed by Baelish without acknowledging him and Brienne had to admire the man's gumption. As IAF President, Petyr Baelish wielded more power than any other single person in the sport, but she supposed as returning world champion that Robb had political capital to spend. 

“Are you ready?” Baelish asked. “I'll be presenting your team and car.” 

“What about Lannister Corp?” Jaime asked. 

Petyr's lips thinned unpleasantly. “I warned Tywin they wouldn't be able to compete with your team in terms of appeal, but it seems he wanted to test that theory. For a smart man, sometimes your father can be extremely bull-headed. Brienne, I want you on my left side, Jaime on my right for the introductions. Where's your media rep?” 

Brienne looked around, saw Pia waiting at the microphone that had been set up, and waved her over. 

“So many young women on your team,” Petyr said appreciatively, and though the assessment was true and innocuous enough, she didn't like hearing it coming from him. 

“So many talented women,” Brienne said, and Petyr inclined his head before leading them to the throng. 

Though she hated to admit it afterward, it had been good to have Petyr conducting their car launch. He was untrustworthy and self-interested in general, but it served them well here, when he was happy to do most of the talking and all of the showing off, and Brienne could mostly just stand there trying to figure out what to do with her hands so she didn't look too absurd in the photos. Jaime of course looked fantastic, and she let herself admire him as he engaged with a few of the less obnoxious reporters, as he did the rest of the talking about her car and the improvements that had been made, as he looked occasionally over at her with eyes as clear and green and gleaming as emeralds. She was certain the cameras were capturing every last moment of her open admiration, but they'd captured it last season, too, and she hadn't even intended it then. 

The rest of the crew hovered behind and Jaime made sure to point them out, leading everyone in a long round of enthusiastic applause until even Bronn looked embarrassed. By the time it was done, Brienne's palms were stinging and the media looked ready for the whole event to be done, scattering eagerly to the other teams' garages as the whine of the other cars pulling out into the pit lane carried on the air. 

Brienne's heart pounded both eager and anxious to finally be out on a real Formula 1 track in her beloved car. She distractedly bid Petyr goodbye and then hurried to her driver's room to change into her Nomex undershirt and jumpsuit. Unlike Jaime's driver room, the walls of hers were still almost entirely bare, the seating simple and unimpressive. The only decoration was a framed photo of her father and Galladon from a few years before he died, which she touched briefly like a talisman. Her father, as promised, was not coming to watch her drive, was insistent he couldn't bear it, and it helped to see his and her brother's smiling faces now. She hoped to fill the rest of the space as the season went on, but she had wanted to start with a clean slate. Laid out along the small couch was her jumpsuit and safety gear, and she put it on as her stomach turned in a nervous circle. 

The shape of the Evenstar suits were the same as any other, but Sansa's use of the team colors and logo were lovely, and she'd hidden barely-visible suns and moons on the inner fabric near Brienne's heart that made her feel like her father and her whole island were with her. With the necklace Jaime had given her for Crone's Day nestled under it all, she felt wrapped in their love and protection. 

When she emerged, Jaime was waiting for her with a warm smile and her helmet. He'd asked to design her first helmet, promising he wouldn't just make it bright green like the Moat Cailin one, and though Brienne mostly trusted him, she was relieved to see it didn't look like that at all. It was, in fact, gorgeous: a deep blue base that matched her car, set off with rose- and gold-colored patterns, the star from the Evenstar Racing logo, and her number: 24, her brother's birthday. Along the bottom were a small line of waves, which would be mostly hidden once she had her neck gear on. 

Brienne took it reverently. “This is perfect, Jaime, thank you.” 

“I also brought the Moat Cailin one, in case you wanted to use that instead,” he said, and she laughed a little and kissed him quickly, her gratitude outweighing her shyness. 

She turned the helmet around in her hands, knowing she should finish getting ready and get to the car, but her feet were stuck in place with the weight of everything that was to come. It wasn't a race, but the fans and the media and the teams themselves had been waiting for winter testing like a pack of eager horses being tightly reined. The spotlight on her and Evenstar was especially focused, and she knew from now until the end of the season her every turn on the track would be watched and dissected, a thousand chances to mess up, a thousand times she'd have to prove herself no matter what had come before. It wasn't the driving she feared, it was the judgment that had followed her her entire life. 

Jaime shifted nearer and touched her shoulder gently, like he was afraid to spook her. “Are you ready for this?” he asked, and the familiarity of the question grounded her. 

“I don't know,” she admitted. 

“You are. You've got this,” he reassured her. “Go get in the car, it's time to drive.” He pulled on the headset that was slung around his neck and gave her an encouraging smile. 

Brienne breathed in his certainty and it unlocked her knees enough to walk into the main part of the garage where she saw her crew standing in two lines, forming a path for her to walk through. They looked as nervous and excited as she felt, except for Arya who looked like she was gearing up for a fight, her teeth bared in her eagerness. As Brienne passed, they whispered words of encouragement and patted her on the back. Podrick waited at the end, the neck brace in his hands, a huge smile on his round face. 

“Let m-me help,” he said, holding out the brace and earpiece. He helped her get fully suited up and then into the car and when it roared to life underneath her, Brienne looked up at him. His eyes were shining and he tapped the top of her helmet. “G-g-good to go!” 

She pulled down her visor and sat for a moment, unable to make her hands work, until she heard a crackle in her ear and then, “Are you reading me, Wrench?”

“I hear you,” she said. 

“You have to press the button on the steering wheel to go.”

Brienne grimaced and craned her neck to look at Jaime where he was grinning at her from the command computers. “Fuck off,” she said, but she was able to get her body back under her own control and she accelerated into the pit lane, the crew cheering as she peeled out of the garage for the first time, the media having swarmed back to take photos and video. 

“That's better,” Jaime said cheerily. “You've got a clear path on the pit lane and the track, so get on out there.” 

She did, trying to focus on the smooth rolling of the tires under her, the now clear blue sky above her, and the long black ribbon of the track that she'd spent hours running simulations on and watching video of. Last year the track and the sky had looked just like this, but it all felt different sitting in _her_ car, knowing the testing they were doing would affect _her_ season. Everything was on her. Her hands were sweaty in her gloves and the car weaved like she only barely had it under control. 

“How fast should I start?” she asked, already hitting 100 after the first set of curves. 

“Keep it at one-twenty max for about five laps,” Jaime said. “Then we'll have you stretch her legs. How are your legs, by the way?” he asked in an entirely too innocent tone. 

“Fine.” 

“Not too compact in there?”

“Not any more than yours were in your car.” 

“Your legs are longer than mine, though. Your body has to be half-legs, honestly.”

Brienne frowned as she tried to remember everything Addam had told her as she braked around the curves: don't lower your head when you decelerate, understand your lines and corners, remember that driving is only seventy percent of your attention. That didn't mean Jaime could be the entire other thirty percent. “Okay,” she bit off, speeding up a little even though it had only been one lap. 

“What do you think, a third legs or half?”

“Can we stop talking about my legs? I'm trying to drive.”

“Of course.” She managed another half lap before he said, “I'm still going with half.”

“Jaime,” she groused, and his chuckle came in low into her ear. “What are you doing?”

“Helping,” he said. It took her another two curves before she realized her hands weren't shaky anymore, her stomach wasn't in knots. He'd annoyed her to distract her, which only served to annoy her further, but she was also grateful. 

“Start helping by telling me what you want me to do.” 

“I'm not sure this is appropriate venue for that, Wrench.” Her whole head went very hot inside her helmet, imagining the wicked grin he was surely wearing right now.

“Crone help me,” she sighed. “I could still make someone else my race engineer, you know.” 

“You could, but you won't.” 

“Don't test me,” she grumbled. 

“Fifth lap,” Jaime said, “pick up speed.” She did, relaxing even further into the rumbling of the car, the whine of the engine. The bleachers whipped by outside but she was moving too fast to see more than flashes of color and that they were packed with people. Not as many as would be crowded around the track on opening day, but enough. As the speed picked up and her vision focused on the narrow tunnel of the view in front of her and what she could glimpse in her rearview mirrors, Brienne forgot there was anyone watching at all. Her world was only the asphalt ahead, the confines of the cockpit, and Jaime with her in her ear, giving directions and occasional advice, pushing her faster. By the time he called her in to box so the pit crew could get practice reps and the engineers could make adjustments, she felt comfortable and loose, and that feeling stayed with her until Tywin Lannister shadowed their door. 

She and Jaime had been going over readouts with Arya and Bronn when Arya looked over at the car to point something out and went silent, glaring so intensely that Brienne wondered if Tywin could feel it from where he stood. 

But before any of the four of them could even move, Podrick was there in the man's face. “W-what do you w-want?”

“I came to see the beneficiaries of our generous donation,” Tywin said, not even looking at Podrick. He seemed to only have eyes for Jaime. Jaime looked like every muscle in his body had clenched, and she could see his pulse jumping in his neck. 

Brienne moved in front of him and over to Tywin, touching Pod's shoulder and gesturing with her head. Podrick frowned but he moved back, letting her take the space. Brienne hadn't seen Tywin Lannister since Jaime's hospital room, and he looked as cool and calculating as ever, but now that she knew what he was capable of it filled her with more fear than she'd known before. She squared her shoulders and used her height to her advantage to look down at him. 

“We were happy to take your money,” she said, knowing he would understand what she meant by that. The man was vicious, not stupid. 

Tywin's lip curled into a brief sneer. “You didn't just take Lannister _money_, did you?” he said, too soft for the media to hear. His back was to the cameras as well, hiding his words from anyone but her. 

“Jaime and the others joined our team willingly,” she said, keeping her voice just as quiet. 

“Willingly? What would you have done if he hadn't come with you on this foolishness?”

“I would have let him live his life.” 

Tywin looked unimpressed. “Everyone pretends to be so honorable, but you control him as much as anyone.” 

Brienne tried to ignore Tywin's words, but she couldn't resist a quick glance back at Jaime, who looked as concerned as he was furious now. “I don't control Jaime. We're partners.” 

“Ah yes, _partners_.” The disgust in that one word felt like a sword to her stomach. She prayed Jaime would just stay where he was, that he would understand this was not the time or place for the confrontation he surely wanted to have. “I hope you pay the rest of the Lannister men on your team differently than you pay my son. You're bound to be too tired to race otherwise.”

Rage settled over her like a thick, burning blanket, choking and scalding her at once, and she leaned forward knowing she wasn't successfully hiding anything now from the cameras. She could hear murmuring as she tried to steady her breathing. “If you came here to try to put some wedge between me and Jaime, it won't work. And if you came here to gloat, just remember who had the most cameras at their car launch. It wasn't Lannister Corp. Did anyone even show up for yours?”

And that, she saw, was a direct hit, her wild swing connecting straight to his ego. 

“You think you can stand up to me.”

“I know I can.” She heard harsh whispering from behind her, wondered how many of them it was taking to keep Jaime away still. She had a minute at most before he leapt forward anyway. “I'm here to race. You keep your distance and we'll keep ours.” 

“I know you're up to something,” Tywin said, and he looked past her shoulder, his eyes glinting. It startled her still how much they looked like Jaime's in color and shape, and how little in the man behind them. “I'll find out what it is.”

“Good luck,” she said, taking a step back and raising her voice. “We appreciate your well-wishes, and your personal apology for what happened with Jaime. It's not your fault you were too trusting of your own family. I've heard your father was much the same.” From what Jaime had told her, Tywin and Tytos Lannister could not have been more different, and she knew being compared to a man Tywin saw as inherently weak would irritate him for days, especially if it got played on F1 news, which given Brienne was involved, she was fairly certain it would be. 

Tywin didn't even bother responding, he just shot Jaime one last glare before he turned abruptly and stormed out of the garage, a handful of reporters scurrying after him, asking questions. 

She turned her back on the rest and Jaime was already there, searching her face. “What did he really say? You looked pissed.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said, but she knew that would only hold him off until they were alone again. She squeezed his arm, and he still felt as tense as when they'd first seen his father. “Come on, let's finish looking at these numbers so I can get back on the track.” 

They all glanced at each other but did as she suggested, though Tywin's presence lingered, a dull fog soaking through the earlier joy for the whole rest of the day.

* * *

Though they didn't see Tywin again for the rest of that first week of winter testing, the damage had been done. 

At the end-of-day media recap that evening, Brienne and Jaime stood in front of the garage and dodged questions about what was really going on between Evenstar Racing and Lannister Corp. 

“Just friendly competition,” Jaime insisted tightly for the third time before turning to Melisandre. “Don't ask about my father,” he warned her and she put on a look of false innocence. 

“I'm not interested in that. I _am_ interested in knowing whether you're ready to comment on the photos now.” She held out her phone showing the WSN website with the headline _Do These Photos Show Evidence of a Once-Secret Relationship?_

Brienne's stomach hardened and she resolutely did not look at Jaime to see his response. “We're not commenting on that,” she said as Pia had instructed. “What's between me and Jaime is private. It's disgusting that you would focus on pointless gossip instead of why we're all here.” 

“Pointless? If you truly were together before this, why did you lie about it? Why were you hiding?” 

“Why?” Brienne scoffed. “_This_ is exactly why. You all have been asking about us nonstop since the interview. How much worse would it have been when I wasn't even the driver?” 

“So you admit it?”

“We don't admit anything,” Jaime jumped in. “Brienne's point is you're no better than the cheapest paparazzi desperate to make a buck by printing out grainy photos that don't prove shit. I thought you were sports reporters, not leeches. Next question,” he said, turning to the nearest microphone that wasn't Melisandre's. 

Every media encounter from that point on went much the same. When they wholesale ignored all of the rudest questions the empty space was taken up with other ones about Brienne's suitability as a driver and how dismal their overall chances were as a small constructor team. It often felt like they were just pole-vaulting from one deep pit to the next any time a reporter shoved a microphone in their face. 

The ensuing articles framed it as a spoiled child rebelling against his father, angry that he'd been caught doing something naughty, mad at Tywin for trying to make amends by giving Jaime's girlfriend a chance, which drove both of them to the edge of fury. Brienne hated how it made it seem like her being here was driven only by some combination of horniness and pettiness; that it was all down to Jaime's insistence, and her own agency in making the decision was stripped away. When Brienne had started the practice runs she'd bemoaned how few days there were, but now she wished that they were done entirely and they could retreat back to Tarth where the distance made things easier. She hoped at least the break until the second session would let some of the intensity die out. 

The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that she got to go back to the hotel with Jaime at the end of every day, and no matter how tense they were walking in the door of their room, they'd soon be unwinding in each other's arms. Those moments, where Brienne felt free to touch to her fill, where Jaime would whisper all the deep parts of his heart, were bright starbursts in an otherwise hazy sky, and she treasured every one. 

They spent the first blissful day of the break between testing sessions entirely in their hotel room, mostly curled around each other watching non-racing-related TV and talking. Jaime shared stories of his early years in karting and Brienne talked about her stint as a mechanic on Renly's team. 

“Do you still have a crush on him?” Jaime asked at one point, when she was doing a set of stretches Syrio had ordered her to perform every day. 

From the side-lunge she was in, Brienne shot him a dry look. “He's not any less handsome than he was.”

“You won't provoke me,” he said lightly from where he lounged on the bed. “I'm the one who's seen you naked.” 

She shifted to her other leg, felt her tight muscles protest a little as they pulled and slowly eased. “Why does it matter then?”

“Because you're going to be facing him on the track. You're going to have to be cutthroat and it's easier to do with people you don't like.” 

“Jaime, I would cut _you_ off if we were racing each other.” 

He laughed and his face was a mix of pleasure and a little regret. “If only,” he sighed. “I can't even have a karting race with you anymore.”

Brienne pulled herself back to standing, pulled her left arm across her body. “Not even with your new hand?” 

Jaime glanced at the case where he'd left his prosthetic for today, his brow knit in consideration. “Honestly I don't know. I just assumed, but...” When he looked at her the hope in his eyes was so bright she felt heated by it. “Do you think?”

“I think we've got a plan for the summer break now,” she said, finishing her stretches by pulling her right arm around. 

“Come here, Wrench,” he said softly. “Now that you're all limbered up we should celebrate.” 

“Celebrate what?”

“Who cares,” he murmured, crawling across the bed to get to her. 

They ordered food in and barely bothered to get dressed and Brienne wished they could have spent the whole week like that, the two of them cocooned and free from everyone else's prying eyes. They all gathered the next day in the cramped hotel restaurant to plan for the last testing, and when the crew teased them about how they'd spent their day off Jaime just smiled mysteriously and Brienne managed to avoid talking about it at all, and they let the others think whatever they wanted as they shared several plates of surprisingly good cheese fries. 

The days passed and they steadfastly avoided the media, having almost all of their meetings in the safe harbor of Bright Hotel, and when they arrived back for the second set of winter testing there were half as many reporters and twice as many questions about the actual racing. It seemed their novelty had finally worn off and everyone had, at least for now, given up trying to learn more about their relationship and the Lannister family drama, and started asking instead about what kind of work they were doing to the car and what Brienne, as a rookie and a woman, was taking away from her laps. Whatever Tywin had hoped would happen by coming to their garage and releasing those photos, their refusal to engage, as directed by Pia, had worked to minimize the damage. Brienne knew they would need to keep that relentless focus for the rest of the season, not let Tywin try to drag them to his playing field where he knew all the rules and owned all the referees. It would be a constant drain of their willpower and attention, and even harder to avoid with the continuous pace of the season, but the alternative was worse. Melisandre was also a liability now, and they stopped taking her questions entirely until she stopped coming around. Brienne worried a little about cutting her out so completely, but she was obviously already in Tywin's pocket and they gained nothing trying to pry her free. 

With the media hurricane downshifting into a more gentle storm, Brienne found the second set of testing much more helpful. Before the Sunspear practice laps she hadn't driven at all since November and she hadn't been in her own car since last August. While it was still her car, they had made enough changes that she felt a bit like she was meeting an old friend after years apart: the familiarity of what they'd been was still there, but the way they approached it was new, and it would take time to regain that comfortable rapport. The hours she spent on the track helped with all of that. 

By the time they finished their final media session on the last day of winter testing, Brienne was feeling settled and even hopeful about the season ahead. Arya and the engineering team had made subtle but necessary changes, and Bronn and the mechanics had implemented them perfectly after the initial rough start on Tarth. The car was considerably faster, and though they hadn't touched the handling, the front wing adjustments made the air flow differently over the whole car, which Brienne had already adapted to. They were poised to put in a good showing at opening day in just a few weeks and now it was time to relax for a night before trundling everything up and making the journey back to Tarth. 

She was stretching her arms wide in the paddock, yawning, when Arya approached. 

“Hey,” the younger woman said, smiling confidently. “We're going out for celebratory drinks and we want you to come with us.” 

“I don't know,” Brienne hedged. Jaime had been hovering near her most of the day, brushing his fingers over the soft part of her wrist, pressing his hip gently against hers, a hundred small promises for what they'd get up to that evening. They got up to similar most evenings but she yearned for him still. “We've got to get everything packed up tomorrow, that'll be an early start and still take all day.”

“It's a women-only get-together. There'll be the ones on our team, plus Sansa came down with my family and we've been making connections with a few other women here that are fresh to trackside work. They're on different teams, but it would be good for us all to know each other.” 

“How did you find them?”

Arya shrugged. “Not a lot for engineers to do while you're busy driving for hours. A lot of mingling happens and there's so few of us we tend to gravitate towards each other. You know how it is. Come on, you have to go. You're the reason a lot of us are here in the first place. Won't it be nice to actually talk about all of the bullshit the guys just don't understand with someone besides me?” 

Brienne felt her cheeks warm and she nodded. “I'd like that,” she admitted. 

“Great! We'll meet you in the lobby at eight. The Hound said he'd chauffeur us.” 

Jaime had been more enthusiastic than she was when she told him, nearly shoving her out the door at ten til, making her swear she'd send photos or video if she got up on any tables to dance. 

“Jaime,” she'd laughed, “I'm not going to get that drunk. We're just going to talk.”

“Then you'll have wasted the evening,” he said solemnly. “Go have fun. Text me dirty photos. Don't worry about tomorrow for one night.” He kissed her hard, swiping his tongue over hers in a move that almost made her reconsider staying, until he did actually push her out the door. “I'll be here when you come back,” he murmured, a hungry assurance, and she shivered a little and nodded. 

When Brienne entered the lobby, Arya was already there and a few minutes later Ygritte, Asha, Pia, and Shireen all filtered down as well. Ygritte and Asha started chatting immediately, and when Shireen looked around with a nervous smile at all of them, Pia took Shireen's arm in hers and walked with her outside, talking about how well she'd done finding this hotel, putting the other woman at ease. 

“We're going to pick up Sansa on the way, and then the others are meeting us there. Is Lannister going to survive a few hours without you?” 

“He'll manage,” Brienne said, and then, trying to lean into the spirit of the evening, added, “But he'll be very lonely and spend the entire time texting Bronn, I'm sure.” 

Arya grinned. “Perfect. Those two can keep each other company with their pining.” 

They stopped at the fancy hotel the Starks were staying at and picked up Sansa, who was dressed in a strikingly fashionable skirt and blouse combo, her hair loose and shiny. She climbed in and stuffed herself in the back row with Brienne and Arya, giving Brienne an unexpected and warm hug. 

“I've been watching you the last couple of weeks. You're doing great,” Sansa said. 

“Oh, I, uh, thank you.”

“If you need any outfit advice for interviews, I'm just a video chat away.” 

“I'll keep that in mind. The team uniforms are perfect, thanks again for doing that for us.” 

Sansa smiled prettily and waved her off. “It was my pleasure. I'm glad you changed out of your jumpsuit for tonight, though.” She looked Brienne up and down critically. “Honestly I don't love that men's shirt on you, but the slacks and heels combo is nice.” 

“Ugh, Sansa, no one asked you,” Arya groaned. 

“I don't have a lot of shirts for going out drinking,” Brienne explained, embarrassed. She was actually wearing one of Jaime's shirts, a deep burgundy silk one that was predictably too tight across the shoulders, but she liked the feel of the smooth fabric on her skin. 

With a perfectly shaped frown, Sansa leaned into Brienne's space as Sandor hurried them to their destination, and she undid two extra buttons of Brienne's shirt, showing off far too much chest and the fact that Brienne wasn't wearing a bra underneath. 

“Better,” Sansa pronounced, and Brienne could feel the blush spread down through her chest, looked down to see her skin trying to grow as red as Jaime's shirt. 

“Her boobs are gonna fall out,” Arya said. 

“She doesn't have boobs,” Sansa said, shooting Arya a small glare. “That's why this works. Only a flat-chested woman could pull this off. Honestly I'm jealous.” 

Brienne wasn't offended – it wasn't like her lacking breasts was either a surprise or, in and of itself, a taunt; she was mostly just mystified. “I'm not trying to impress anyone,” she said hesitantly. 

Sansa made a little 'pft' noise that was still adorable coming from her. “You're impressing yourself, and Jaime when you get back tonight. That's all. Arya, you're not taking us to some spot crowded with F1 people are you?”

“It's incredible we've been sisters twenty-two years and you have to ask that question.” 

“You say that like you've ever been forthcoming about anything except how much you hated me growing up.” 

“I didn't hate you,” Arya protested. “I hated how stereotypically girly you were.” Arya looked at Brienne and shrugged. “I didn't really understand feminism and the patriarchy yet.” 

“Can we not talk about the patriarchy for one night?” Asha complained from the front row. “I just want to get drunk and kiss somebody.” 

“I thought this was a group celebration,” Pia said. “A chance for us girls to get some bonding time in.”

“I fail to see how that keeps me from kissing someone,” Asha grinned. 

Sandor came to an abrupt stop and shut off the engine. “Get out of my car,” he grumbled. Brienne looked out the window and saw a gleaming red and gold sign proclaiming Club Sandship. “Text me when you're ready to leave and I can be back in ten. If any of you throws up on the drive home, you're paying for the cleaning.” 

Brienne hid her smile as she followed the other women out of the car and then leaned her head back in before shutting the door. “Thanks, Sandor. We really appreciate you doing this.” He mumbled something but the annoyance in his eyes eased as he nodded at her. 

She followed the other women up to the front of the line, where Arya took over, approaching the bouncer at the door. He was shorter and more slender than Brienne, but he had a dangerous face. “Hey Roggo,” Arya said and the man flicked his eyes towards her, then opened the door for them without another word. 

The music that spilled out was loud but not overpowering, some sort of pulsing electronic music that had Asha's hips swaying as they walked in. Arya waved to the bartender, who gestured at an empty booth that was cordoned off, and she led them there, moved the barrier aside so they could all sit down. Sansa was boring holes into Arya's skull with the laser beam intensity of her stare, and once they were all seated she leaned across the table and demanded, “How do you know all these people?”

“I have connections,” Arya said innocently, and Brienne, sitting in-between the two of them in the middle u of the curved booth, leaned back in her seat to let them argue over her. 

“In a _club_ in _Sunspear_?”

“_You_ know people! Why is it so surprising I do, too?”

“Because you spend all your time with cars! Are you involved in something illegal?”

Arya snorted. “Yes, and I'm going to tell you all about it.”

“Arya, I'm serious,” Sansa said, and Brienne could imagine Gal being as overprotective and concerned about her, knew Arya was feeling both loved and annoyed by her older sibling. “If there's something you can't tell Mom and Dad, you can always tell me.” 

“It's fine,” Arya insisted. “I met Roggo at the track last season. He's a huge F1 fan and I got him some Direwolf stuff. He owed me is all.” 

Sansa pursed her lips and studied Arya closely, and whatever she saw seemed to settle her for now. “As long as you don't owe _him_ anything.” 

“Gross, no. Give me some credit, I'm not going to have sex with someone just to get you all into a club.” 

“You're so young-”

“Stop,” Arya sighed, covering her ears with her hands. “I can't hear you!” 

“So naive,” Sansa went on, and Brienne had to chuckle at the singsong tone her voice had adopted; this was clearly a bit they had done many times before. “Such a precious baby.” 

“Can you punch her for me?” Arya asked Brienne loudly. “My hands are occupied.” 

“This booth is big,” Pia said, “how many other people are coming?”

“Three, I think,” Arya said, gingerly lifting her hands from her ears and shooting Sansa a narrow-eyed glare. 

“I think they're here,” Ygritte added, waving at the three women looking eagerly around the bar. The tallest one, a woman only a few inches shorter than Brienne, but slimmer and more beautiful, waved back and she dragged the other two with her. They were all quite beautiful, Brienne noticed with a familiar resignation. They also reminded her of the three bears as they introduced themselves: short, cheerful Meera Reed; the tall and confident Dacey Mormont; and in the middle, perfectly sized and outrageously lovely Margaery Tyrell. Her first thought – the most familiar and deeply buried – was that she could never introduce Jaime to any of these women, especially Dacey, who had all of Brienne's height and none of her shyness or mismatched features. But even as she thought it, she imagined how hurt Jaime would be that it had even crossed her mind. If he'd only ever been interested in a woman for height and beauty, he could have had any model he wanted, no matter how reviled he was in the sport. _He loves **me**_, she thought, and smiled softly down at her big hands in her lap at how _true_ that felt, how sure she was of his heart.

“She's thinking about Jaime,” she heard Pia say, and when Brienne looked up they were all staring at her, wearing equally amused grins, and she felt her whole body go hot. 

“Sorry,” she stammered, “did you want something?”

“To buy you a drink,” Dacey said, smiling wide. “Several, if possible. My little sister, Lyanna? She wouldn't stop talking about you after Grid Kids last year, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten a job with Sunspear Racing this year if you and Arya hadn't paved the way. In fact,” she said, laughing a little, “I took Podrick Payne's place, so I definitely owe you a drink.” 

Brienne nodded and smiled a little, warm and happy and shy. As the night went on and the drinks flowed, the warmth and happiness grew and her shyness disappeared. Dacey was working on the pit crew for Oberyn Martell, and Meera was an engineer with Direwolf. Margaery, like Sansa and Shireen, didn't work on a car directly but she was interested in the strategy and was hoping to be a team principal someday. 

“I even told Loras I'd be his race engineer if he wanted,” she laughed. “I think he'd rather go with no engineer than his sister.” 

“His loss,” Sansa said from where she was pressed extremely close to Margaery's side. Asha and Ygritte had disappeared out onto the dance floor and everyone else was spread out along the booth, but as the drinking had progressed, the distance between Sansa and Margaery had grown smaller. 

Several plates of greasy appetizers and two glasses of water later, Brienne was relaxing contentedly at the table alone while the rest of them enjoyed the club. Girls' nights had always been a mystery to Brienne; they, like sleepovers, were something she'd seen in movies and TV shows and had never experienced for herself. Growing up it had not only been the boys who'd been unkind to her. When they were done taunting and had progressed to just ignoring her, Brienne would watch the other girls huddled together, heads bent towards each other to share their secrets and their burdens and she had tried not to be jealous of the easy way they'd trusted each other. It had seemed impossible she'd find even one woman she could share that with, especially with her career choice, but she and Arya had grown close and there was the potential for more with Pia and perhaps even the others. Brienne craned her neck to look for everyone, saw Arya and Shireen dancing near each other and laughing, Margaery and Sansa so close there wasn't any light between them, Dacey and Pia talking together as they ignored the flirtations of two men at the bar. Suddenly Asha appeared out of the crowd and crawled into the booth slumping face first into the back of the seat. 

“Are you okay?” Brienne asked, blinking at the other woman. 

“I kissed Ygritte,” she muttered into the fake leather. “Like an idiot.” 

“Did she not like it?”

“She's not into girls. We're just friends apparently.” Asha thudded her forehead against the seat. 

“Oh,” Brienne said, out of her depth. 

“I have to quit working for your team.”

Brienne laughed and Asha shot her a glare that stilled the sound. “You're not really serious?”

“Probably not,” Asha sighed. She turned around in the seat and spread her fingers wide on the tabletop, staring morosely at them. “I was so sure she was into me. How did you know Jaime was interested in you?”

“I knew for sure when he kissed me,” Brienne said on a chuckle. “Ours just went better.”

“Lucky.” 

“Yeah, I am,” Brienne said, knowing she was grinning too wide, showing her big teeth, but she couldn't stop herself. Asha rolled her eyes and Brienne tried to think of something to say to the other woman to distract her. Brienne was, on the whole, terrible at small talk, but at least they had racing in common. “Your brother is Theon Greyjoy, right? Why didn't you join Kraken team?”

“You know how hard it is to get a mechanic job as a woman. There wasn't any space at Kraken, and they didn't seem too interested in making that space for me. When Jaime contacted me, he said he was specifically looking for women to join. I'm not even sure how he found me. Theon might have told him; my brother is an arrogant prick, but he tried a couple of times to get me into the garage. He just had no real weight to throw around over there. I'm glad he's with Sunspear now.” Theon had taken Addam's open spot, surprising almost the entire sport. 

“I hope he does well there,” Brienne said and Asha snorted. 

“But not too well, right?” 

Brienne smiled ruefully. “Right. I forgot, for a moment. I can't believe I'm going to race.”

“You're gonna do great, and we've got your back.” 

“That's right,” Pia said, having returned. Shireen, Arya, and the others all filtered in behind her, Ygritte hovering at the back, not looking at Asha. “We should have a toast!” 

“Yes!” Dacey shouted, raising her empty glass. “I'll get a round of shots.”

“I just sobered up,” Brienne protested, but it didn't matter as the other women crowded back into the booth and Dacey returned shortly with a tray full of shot glasses trembling with golden liquid. 

“They just gave me a bunch,” she said with a stunning smile and Brienne had a feeling she knew why. 

Dacey passed the drinks out, sliding them expertly across the tabletop to each woman's waiting hand, and they lifted their drinks high. “To Brienne!” Pia said, and the others echoed her so loudly that the people near them craned their heads around to see what was happening. Another night, when she was feeling less loved and more self-conscious, Brienne might've just buried her head in her hands, but she gently lifted her drink with the others and downed it to their rousing cheers. 

A round of shots later, Brienne pulled out her phone to text Sandor. She managed a quick, mostly understandable message and then checked to see if Jaime had sent anything, but all was quiet. Suddenly Brienne remembered the message Sandor had goaded her into sending that first January night and she grinned wickedly at her phone as she typed in another two-word message for Jaime. 

They bid the other women goodbye, promising they would do this again during the season, sharing friendly hugs in a way Brienne had never had the chance to before. She felt like she was floating, not because she was drunk, but because she was happy. She made sure the other women were all safely packed away into a shared cab before climbing into Sandor's SUV to drop off Sansa. 

“Where's your girlfriend?” Arya asked on the way, poking her sister with one slender finger. 

“She's not my girlfriend,” Sansa said, but there was a flush to her cheeks that wasn't just alcohol-induced. 

“You knew who I was talking about though.” When Sansa gave Arya an annoyed look, Arya just smiled smugly and Sansa huffed and rolled her eyes. 

Once Sansa was away with one last eloquently aggrieved glance at her sister, Sandor deposited the rest of them back at the Bright Hotel. 

“Thanks,” Brienne told Arya in the lobby, gripping the other woman's small hands between her huge ones. “That was a great idea.”

“Told you,” Arya said triumphantly. Shireen was holding up Pia now and promised to help the other woman back to her room. Ygritte and Asha weren't talking still, but there seemed to be no animosity, just awkwardness. 

When Brienne stumbled into her hotel room at past one am, she wasn't surprised to see Jaime still awake and waiting for her, his eyes bright with a simmering heat. He was sitting in the armchair wearing only sweatpants riding low on his hips. 

“I got the most interesting message earlier,” he said, his voice floating out of the darkness cut only by the light in the hallway. “I hope this one you meant to send.” 

He held out the phone to show her the text, but she hadn't forgotten it. It was two simple words: _Fuck me._

“Well?” she said, lifting her chin. Her shirt was still unbuttoned low and she could feel Jaime's eager eyes on her as he stood in languorous slow motion. He stalked towards her, taking his time, his gaze skating over her body while she waited for him, already going liquid. When he pressed his mouth to the exposed skin of her chest, his hair brushing her chin, she ignited, gasping and tipping her head back. Later, Brienne rode him in a hazy dream, his body surging as sure as a heartbeat between her legs, her own heart floating suspended inside her. They moved slow and sweet as honey, his orgasm a steady, pulsing completion ushered in by his quiet moan. Her own flowed through her in a relentlessly gentle wave until she was sticky and sated and held safe in his arms. 

“I love you,” he whispered into her ear. 

“I love you, too. More than I did yesterday,” she added shyly. “Not as much as I will tomorrow.” 

Jaime's arms tightened around her and he took a breath like he was going to say more, but instead he nuzzled into her hair, his nose brushing circles against her skin. Entwined, they fell asleep, and she dreamed of tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real-life Formula 1 winter testing has started again (YAY) and FIA did in fact change the rules for 2020 so constructors can no longer use privacy screens in the garages during winter testing, which I genuinely don't understand why they'd change that but here we are. ALSO: Drive to Survive season 2 is out on Netflix next week! Every single person who let me know they watched DtS season 1 and enjoyed it has brought me untold joy, thank you. And honestly, let me take a moment to say thank you to everybody who comments on this story, from the people who gave it a shot even though they knew nothing (or actively disliked) racing to those who did not recoil in horror when I upped the chapter count last time to everyone in-between. I treasure every single comment.


	30. March (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As she took the first curve slightly too wide, her wheels bumping over the red and white striped curb along the edge, she felt a kind of dreamy euphoria settle over her. For everything that she had gained since Harrenhal last year, for as happy as she'd been since that night in Jaime's apartment on Tarth, Brienne finally felt like all the missing pieces of her life had clicked into place with Jaime's voice amused and flirty in her ear, with the scream of the engine wailing around her, and the smell of rubber and gas and grime in her nose. The grip of her gloves on the steering wheel was still too new to be familiar, but it felt _right_, the last part of the puzzle that she could now step back and see the complicated pattern of her life leading to here.

The House of Fish was gaily decorated in stars and suns and paper race cars when the Evenstar Racing team arrived for their pre-season welcome dinner. All of the regular tables had been moved out and several long banquet tables shoved in the middle of the space inside, with a couple of others crammed under shelters outside. It hadn't rained yet, but it had been threatening all day, and the candles in their high-sided glasses flickered in the cool wind. 

Jaime held Brienne's hand as they wandered around looking at the buffet tables filled with food, including two giant pots of chowder that made Jaime's mouth water just from the smell. 

“There's more in back, too,” Arryk reassured him from where he was ladling bowls out to hungry team members. 

Jaime grinned and nodded at the other man and they finished their circuit of the space before he led Brienne to the middle table where they and Selwyn would sit with a mix of the team. He pulled out a seat for her, pleased by her shy smile as she took it. She didn't always respond so eagerly to his gentle treatment and every time she did he felt a fluttering in his stomach that only redoubled his intentions to try more. 

“I'm gonna go get some chowder before it's all gone,” he said, leaning down to kiss her nose quickly. Since their return from Sunspear and the trial-by-fire of media attention, Brienne had been less reluctant to let him steal the occasional quick kiss in public, even in front of their co-workers. Jaime also intended to take full advantage of that. 

While he waited in line he listened with half an ear to the chatter around him. There was some shop talk – engineers and mechanics still chewing over thorny problems or incipient improvements they were working on – but mostly everyone seemed excited to be back on Tarth, to try to get to know each other in this last calm moment before the season struck. Lannister Corp always held their team dinners in one of the early season race cities, an inevitably extravagant affair that included too much food and wine and not enough chance for team members to mingle. The best part about last year's had been the too-short time he'd spent talking to Brienne and his brother. The distance from Tyrion was the only regret Jaime had about decamping so completely to Tarth for the season. 

_And maybe longer_, he thought, watching Brienne talking animatedly with Podrick, the two of them laughing over something. He could hear the distinctive roll of her laughter from across the room, the noise crashing like waves against a rocky shore, and just as beautiful to him. 

“One bowl or two?” Arryk asked when Jaime reached the front of the line. 

“One to start with.” 

Arryk ladled a huge portion of clam chowder into Jaime's bowl and gave Jaime a wink. “Little extra for my best customer,” he said. 

“It won't go to waste,” Jaime promised, bringing the bowl up to inhale the thick aroma. He glanced back at Brienne and then lowered his voice. “Did you manage the other thing I asked you?” 

With a cheesy wink, Arryk nodded and said, “All acquired and in the kitchen when you're ready.”

“Good man,” Jaime said, grinning. When he returned to the table with his chowder, Brienne and Podrick were gone to get their own dinners and Selwyn had sat down with a plate heaped with food. 

“Good evening, Jaime,” Brienne's father said. He picked up a crab leg and cracked it open with his very big hands and Jaime glanced at his face to judge his mood. Since that first awkward breakfast together Selwyn had seemed fine with Jaime and Brienne being a couple, but they'd all been so busy he'd barely seen Selwyn since he'd left for King's Landing. 

“Good evening,” Jaime said. 

Selwyn glanced briefly to Brienne in the food line. “Seems like testing went well.” 

“It did. We got a lot of good feedback on the car, and the driving practice was good for Brienne. She looks good. On the track,” he added hastily. Selwyn's beard twitched. 

“Interviews seemed difficult.” 

“Some of them. Pia and I have been doing some additional media training with Brienne, though, so we’ll be better prepared for opening weekend.” 

Selwyn cracked the other crab leg and sucked the meat out. “I read that article Melisandre posted, with the photos.” 

Jaime rested his prosthetic hand next to his bowl of chowder and managed to hold Selwyn's steady gaze. “Did you?”

“It's not the public's business what you and Brienne got up to last year.”

“It's not,” Jaime agreed firmly. 

“You can imagine some of those close to her are more curious than others, though.” 

_Ah_. “You'd have to talk to Brienne about it,” Jaime said. 

“I'm talking to you.” 

“Then I'm going to have to end this conversation,” Jaime said. “You can take it up with her, and if she chooses to discuss it, then it's her decision.”

Selwyn studied him for a long minute. “All right,” he conceded. 

Jaime exhaled into his chowder. Brienne and Podrick returned to the table with their own heaping plates of food, and one they'd put together for him since they knew it was difficult to balance with his prosthetic. He smiled warmly at them both, touched by their easy thoughtfulness. 

Selwyn was cheerful with their return, but he didn't direct much of it towards Jaime the rest of the night. Jaime wondered if Selwyn really did think he'd somehow taken advantage of Brienne last year, or if he was just generally mad that they'd lied to him. He hoped somehow Brienne would get the truth out of her father, and that Selwyn would believe her if she told him everything. 

As the evening grew later and people grew more boisterous with drink, the buffet picked nearly clean, Jaime gestured to Arryk, who nodded and disappeared into the back. He reappeared a couple of minutes later with a tray laden with small dessert plates, the other servers behind them with more, and he beelined towards Brienne. 

“Dessert is served!” he announced cheerfully, setting a plate in front of Brienne. 

“Oh, I thought we didn't order-” she stopped and then looked up at Arryk with the excitement of a small child. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Triple chocolate mousse cake, ordered special from Myr,” Jaime said, and when she beamed at him he knew the extravagant cost had been worth it. 

“Gods, I had dreams about this cake,” she laughed. 

Jaime let Arryk set a plate down in front of himself and the others before he leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, “I had dreams about watching you eat this cake.” 

She went bright red and her fork clattered on her plate, drawing their nearby companions' attention, which did not help her blush. He leaned back with an innocent smile. 

Jaime enjoyed watching her eat it with her red cheeks there at the table, but he enjoyed it more when he fed her bites in bed later and tasted the chocolate on her tongue. 

After they'd finished with their dessert and each other and Brienne was stretched out asleep, Jaime gently got out of bed to call Tyrion. The team dinner tonight had been so different from any he'd ever spent with Lannister Corp or even Dragonfire, a gathering of friends as much as coworkers, bolstered by the camaraderie that grew stronger every day for their small, hardworking team. He'd seen mechanics and engineers and their operations team sitting together, had noticed Selwyn making it a point to greet everyone through the evening. Brienne had had a steady stream of employees wishing her luck on opening day, and many of them had done the same for Jaime, too, with the most good-natured sincerity he'd ever received in his life. 

It had at times been almost overwhelming, and Jaime had found himself wishing more than once that Tyrion had had a chance to experience it, too; he was certain Tyrion would be welcomed as easily as he'd been. 

Jaime pulled on sweatpants and one of Brienne's t-shirts and took his phone outside to the little deck off of the back of her house, opposite of Selwyn's. The rain had come and gone and the air was cool but fresh, thin clouds wisping across the night sky. 

“Jaime,” Tyrion said after two rings. “Is everything all right?”

“Why does everyone think something's wrong when I call them?”

“That response says more about you than the rest of us.” 

Jaime snorted. “Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to talk to you.” 

There was a brief pause. “For fun? Are you terminally ill?”

“For gods' sake,” Jaime grunted. “We had our team dinner tonight and I missed you, all right? I wanted to see how you were doing.” 

He waited for Tyrion to make a joke of it, but his brother just uttered a soft, “oh,” and then said, “It's good to hear from you. Tell me how things have been going. I watched as much as I could of winter testing but I had work to do and Evenstar is a bit of a dirty word around Lannister Corp these days.” 

Jaime filled him in on the testing, the reporters' probing questions, and their father's unpleasant visit to the garage. He kept the extent of what Tywin had told Brienne to himself, though; it had been bad enough when she'd relayed it to Jaime, the words like poison in his lungs until she'd helped him breathe it out again. 

“Our father has his claws sharpened,” Tyrion said. “Be on the lookout.” 

Leaning forward in the patio chair, Jaime glanced back at Brienne's still-dark bedroom window before he asked, “Is she in danger from him?”

“Physically, no. Petyr is watching very closely this season.”

“What does Baelish care about Brienne?”

“He's a man driven entirely by the pursuit of profit. Brienne has brought in huge interest already, and interest means eyeballs and eyeballs means the advertisers will pay more. Money always wins, especially for Petyr Baelish, and right now Brienne is money. As long as that's true, she's safe from our father.”

“Do you think he would do something otherwise?” Jaime asked quietly. 

Tyrion was silent for several long seconds. “I honestly don't know anymore. He's obsessed, Jaime. With the family name and the Lannister legacy. After what already happened with you, betting against you, hiring Hoat...I genuinely don't think he ever intended for you to be so badly hurt, and I mostly don't believe he'd injure her, but I think he'd burn Brienne's reputation and career to the ground in a heartbeat and consider you collateral damage.” 

“I don't care about my reputation.” 

“I know you don't, but you care about hers.” 

“I care about _her_.”

“That, big brother, is more than obvious.”

“Are we doing the right thing?” Jaime asked, knowing it wasn't a question for Tyrion but unable to stop it. He'd had too many nightmares of all the ways this could go terribly wrong, he needed to know that they weren't missing something important in the middle of it. 

“You're not letting our father keep you from being happy. Brienne is doing something she obviously loves and is meant for. You're giving him heartburn every single night. It all looks like the right thing from here.”

Jaime exhaled and nodded. “I should get going,” he said. 

“Impatient bedmate?” Tyrion asked lightly. 

“Yeah: me,” Jaime grinned into the phone. 

Tyrion made a disgusted noise over the line. “You're obnoxious when you're in love.”

“I've been told that,” he said on a laugh. “Take care, little brother.” 

“You too. And call our aunt!” he got out before Jaime hung up. 

Jaime went back in and set his phone on the table, stared down at Brienne's pale-skinned form barely visible in the darkness. He knew his father would ruin her in whatever way he could if he discovered they were trying to bring Lannister Corp to its knees. Tywin Lannister didn't know how to yield or let things go, and he'd drag every last one of them to the seven hells with him if he could. Jaime would have to just hold on more strongly and keep them here. He took off his clothes and climbed back into bed next to Brienne, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. 

“Cold,” she mumbled as he pressed his nose into her neck. 

“Sorry. Go back to sleep.” 

“Ok?”

“Everything's fine.” He kissed her hair tenderly and she settled back into slumber, but it took Jaime hours to follow her there himself.

* * *

The Dornish sun was as bright and warm as Brienne had ever felt it the first Saturday of the season. Even though it was a qualifying day, the crowds were thicker than she remembered from opening day last season, a roaring buzz that permeated every square foot of the miles-long track. Media swarmed around the garages and pit lane and gantries, visitors from all over gawked and wandered between the team areas and in the paddocks, soaking it all in. At the end of the constructor line, the crowds were biggest around Evenstar Racing's garage. 

Brienne stood in the middle of it, her helmet clutched to her chest, trying not to panic. There'd been a media panel that morning that she'd sat at with Robb on one side and Oberyn on the other and managed to answer the harmless questions that had mostly been aimed at her; there'd been the fan get-together Pia had set up where a group of twenty excited fans had gotten a tour of the Evenstar paddock and had their pictures taken with Brienne, who'd done her best to smile for each one although by the end she was certain it was more of a grimace; and of course there had been the cameras following her around constantly as she prepared for her first qualifying run ever. But none of that seemed as terrifying now as needing to get into her car and drive it. 

Jaime had been waylaid by the engineers and was across the way in the gantry having a tense discussion, which didn't help her nerves at all. She felt someone at her shoulder and glanced over to find Addam watching her. 

“Just like we practiced it, right?” he said, looking almost offensively calm. When she didn't respond he gently turned her to face him. “Brienne, you can do this. All you have to do is get out there and enjoy it.” 

“Enjoy it? How am I supposed to do that?”

“Qualifying is where you forget about managing tires, worrying about strategy, caring where the other drivers are. You just drive as fast as you can as tight as you can to get the best position. Driving fast is _fun_. If it's not fun, you shouldn't be doing it.”

Pod came over and took the helmet gingerly from her hands while she turned her wide-eyed stare from Addam to him. “T-t-time to suit up,” he said. 

“You ready to have some fun?” Addam asked. 

“No,” she said, but Addam grinned. 

“Yes you are. Get in the car, you'll see.” 

She craned her neck to look for Jaime, but he was still gesturing and arguing about something with Bronn, so she let Podrick help her gear up and she climbed into the car, holding the wheel with trembling hands. Even when she squeezed the plastic hard, the tremor just seemed to move up to her wrists and forearms. A shadow fell across knocking elbows; it was Jaime and he was smiling but his eyes weren't calm. 

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, just a disagreement with the mechanics. They assure me it will be fine. Time for your out-lap, Wrench.”

“Any words of advice?”

He shrugged and gave her a sideways smile that cut through even her worry long enough for her to appreciate how stupidly handsome he was with his perfectly stubbled jaw. “Drive fast,” he said and then pushed her visor down. 

Brienne took one last, calming breath and then pulled out of the garage and into the pit lane as Jaime's voice came in through her earpiece. “You hear me?” he asked. 

“Loud and clear.”

“You've got several cars coming out ahead of you so go slow until you get onto the track.” 

Ahead she saw Connington and Hyle both pull out into the lane, and then past them one of the Dragonfire cars, and both Direwolf cars beyond that. As she rolled by Lannister Corp's garage she couldn't resist a look inside, noticed Lancel was pulling on his gear, though he went still as she drove by. 

There was a brief wait as they were released one by one out onto the track and then Brienne was picking up speed down the entry lane trying to control her breathing by timing it with the grip and release of her hands on the wheel. 

“Clear lane, Wrench; gain slowly for these first couple of curves but by the time you hit the end of the out-lap you should be at max speed. I think you can get your flying lap the first time through and then come back to the garage.” 

Brienne's whole body was tense as she controlled the car straining around her like a leashed animal. Whatever they'd done between winter testing and now, the small tune-ups from yesterday's free practice to this morning, it had given her car extra muscle as it stalked out onto the track. Brienne steadily increased the speed until she was flying down the straightaway towards the start/finish line, pressed back into her seat by the g-forces. Addam had told her during one session that accelerating an F1 car at its peak was like taking off in a space shuttle – and that braking was double that. As Brienne abruptly decelerated to hit her first curve, she could feel what felt like the weight of a child sitting in her skull and all of the ridiculous exercises Syrio made her do to strengthen her neck were no longer a chore but a blessing. 

She gasped and Jaime asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she managed as she came out of the esse and hit a brief straight. “Faster than I’m used to.” 

“That's the intent,” he said. “You've got a good pace here, keep at it.” 

Brienne did, feeling like her body was being compressed into a ball and then baked in the oven of the cockpit, but the world was a dream whizzing by outside of her car, the air that blew up from the wing and then over the protective halo in front of her a mimic of the most powerful storms back on Tarth. Brienne felt her teeth clench into a tight grin as she edged up on one of the Nightfort cars – Slynt, she noted as she passed him. 

“Good work,” Jaime said calmly, and she didn't understand how he sounded so relaxed when she was slashing through the world like a godsdamned lightning bolt. Brienne hurtled around the track until the finish line was in view again and then she shifted into top gear and went even faster. 

“You've got a good enough time on that last lap for Q2,” Jaime said, “you can come back in.”

“I can do better,” she insisted, and she braked hard on the first curve, cutting a tight arc to pull out of it. 

In her ear, Jaime whistled low. “Nice cornering,” he said, though she could hear the annoyed edge in his tone, “but too fast.” 

She ignored him and kept at that speed until she felt as much car as human and by the time she crossed the finish line again, she knew she'd shaved more time off her run. 

“Eight seconds faster,” he reported. 

“I told you,” she crowed, and Jaime's unamused chuckle was a rumble of distant thunder. 

“I underestimated you, Wrench. I won't do that again.” 

“See that you don't,” she said, the adrenaline loosing her tongue as easily as alcohol and for a moment she forgot they were being recorded when she continued: “or I'll have to make you pay.” 

Jaime choked over the line and then he growled, “Box now. We need to debrief.” 

Brienne felt a sharp spike of heat low in her belly and she pulled back down the pit lane and into their garage, not waiting for Pod to help her as she unhooked her steering wheel and climbed out, pulling off her helmet and balaclava and neck brace and dropping them in a heap in the cockpit. She could still feel the vibrations thrumming through her body, hear the high-pitched song of the engine filling her head. She felt electrified, sparks sizzling over her skin looking for release. If anyone touched her she was certain she'd burn them down. When Jaime stalked from the gantry, across the pit lane, and into the garage she thought about dragging him to the floor where they stood. 

“You pushed too hard for Q1,” he said, his whole body taut. 

“I made the cut, didn't I?”

“Probably. There's still ten minutes left.” They were both breathing hard, though they just stood there, the crew giving them space as they darted around preparing the car for Q2. With her blood steaming hot in her veins, Brienne knew what she wanted, and she could feel the responding desire radiating from him, too. 

Brienne licked her lips and then turned and took long, distance-eating steps to her driver's room, Jaime easily keeping pace. When she pushed open the door his hand was on her back, nearly shoving her in; he slammed the door shut behind him and she whirled towards him and pressed him against it, kissing him hard while he clumsily unzipped her driver suit. 

“That was fucking reckless,” he mouthed against her neck, licking the sweat from her skin. 

“I needed to come out strong,” she gasped into his ear, shrugging off her jumpsuit, yanking down her Nomex pants and underwear and pushing them down past her hips. She felt trapped by the fabric, by her own body barely holding in the joy and terror and toes-at-the-edge boldness of her first ever qualifying run. 

Jaime wrapped his right arm around her waist and spun them to press her back against the wall while he unzipped his jeans with his left hand. He was hot and hard against her and then between her legs and she moaned into his ear. 

“It's your first – fuck,” he hissed when she rubbed wet and ready along his length. “Your first qualifying round. We haven't pushed the car that hard before.” He slid into her, both of them eager, and she muffled her cry against his shoulder. 

“I felt it,” she protested as he thrust into her fast and demanding. “It was rea-” the word dissolved into a wordless whine when he shifted and tugged her leg up. “It was ready,” she panted. “I was ready. Gods, Jaime, yes.” She clawed at the back of his shirt, dragging her hands up the silky steel of his back while he drove her to the same relentless edge she'd taken the car, and then beyond, the door hard against the back of her head as she met Jaime hard with her body, pulling him deeper, as deep as she could get him until she was clenching around him, her orgasm hitting with the same heady force as rocketing down a straightaway. Jaime went wild in the band of her arms, biting down hard on the curve of her neck as he came with a barely repressed shout. 

He slumped against her as he thrust one last, slow time, trembling, and she kissed the side of his head. 

“It was the right move,” she said and he nuzzled into her neck, pressing soft kisses to the sting of where his teeth had left small indents in her skin. 

“Not for Q1,” he murmured, pushing himself back and slipping out of her. Brienne shivered at the cool air's touch; reached out to thread her fingers through his hair. 

“I had to be fast. They didn't expect it.” 

“Exactly.” He sighed and leaned into her hand before tenderly dragging it away. “We could have saved that for Q3, or even the race itself,” he continued as he tucked himself back into his pants. 

Brienne bent to loosely tug her clothes and the jumpsuit back up to her waist before she headed for the small, motorhome-like bathroom. “It was more important that I get past this. Begin as you mean to go on, right?” 

“Do you think you can do it again?” he asked, following her, halting at the door as she closed it between them. 

“Which part?” she asked, flushing deeper at her already reddened cheeks and chest in the mirror. Everyone would know what they'd been doing in here. 

“The racing,” Jaime said, his voice dry. “Even I'm not ready for another round of other pursuits yet.” 

“I know I can.” She did, too, the confidence settling around her. Brienne had felt unstoppable for those two laps, all the training and talking and studying coming together into brilliant reality. She finished in the bathroom and then poked her head out. “We can't keep having sex in the driver room.” 

“You started it,” he pouted and when she rolled her eyes he added: “Why not?”

Brienne snorted as she emerged all the way, her suit back on, her face splashed with water. “Because there are so many people and cameras out there we're certain to get caught.” 

“If they barge in here and find us that's on them.” 

“I don't want either of our asses plastered over the internet,” she said sternly, but she followed it up with a tender kiss, enjoying the softness of his lips on hers, the way they welcomed her without asking for more. “What were you really arguing with Bronn about?”

Jaime pulled back a little and she was surprised to see the worried lines between his brows. “Whether the car was ready for what you just did. They made some very late changes and we didn't get a full test on them. I told him if we weren't sure it was safe, we had to revert.” 

“What would you have told him if you were the driver and not me?”

He opened his mouth and then puffed out his cheeks with a sigh. “This is different,” he tried and Brienne shook her head. 

“Bronn won't take any unnecessary risks; you have to let him do his job. And you have to let me do mine.” 

“You have to let me do mine, too, and that includes watching out for my driver.” 

“That's fair,” she agreed, cupping his face in her hands. She rubbed her thumbs over the soft bristles of his closely cropped beard. “As long as you're treating me like your driver and not your...”

“Girlfriend?” he supplied helpfully and she felt her cheeks heat. “Or do you prefer lover?”

“Gods, no,” she laughed. “Girlfriend is good.” The word felt strange on her tongue from lack of use, but Jaime was beaming at her, his happiness smoothing the awkward edges of it until it almost felt natural. “I like being your girlfriend,” she said softly and she knew she was blushing redder. Jaime looked like he wanted to devour her – again – so she kissed him quickly and went for the door. “Come on, Q1 has to be over, I want to see where I ended up.” 

Her second lap had put her in the top five and her crew pounded her on the back with excitement. It was an incredible run and when the seven-minute break was over Brienne was already suited up and back in the car for Q2. Pod patted her helmet and stepped away as she maneuvered quickly out of the garage. 

“Slow your roll there, speedy,” Jaime said in her ear and she slowed down as she drove past the other garages, still beating every other car out of the pit lane. “Same as last time?”

“How about faster?” she said as the engine revved and picked up under her feet. 

“How about you just make the top ten for the last qualifying round?”

“Addam said qualifying was supposed to be fun.” 

“Addam needs to shut the fuck up,” Jaime grunted. 

“Language, Lannister,” she reprimanded him as she hit her stride down the straightaway. 

“Pay more attention to the track and less to my tongue,” he drawled.

As she took the first curve slightly too wide, her wheels bumping over the red and white striped curb along the edge, she felt a kind of dreamy euphoria settle over her. For everything that she had gained since Harrenhal last year, for as happy as she'd been since that night in Jaime's apartment on Tarth, Brienne finally felt like all the missing pieces of her life had clicked into place with Jaime's voice amused and flirty in her ear, with the scream of the engine wailing around her, and the smell of rubber and gas and grime in her nose. The grip of her gloves on the steering wheel was still too new to be familiar, but it felt _right_, the last part of the puzzle that she could now step back and see the complicated pattern of her life leading to here. 

When the car groaned and started bucking underneath her on the last sweeper curve before the final straightaway, that rightness burrowed into her heart for safekeeping as she struggled to retain control of her suddenly malfunctioning car. 

“Woah,” she said, her hands going tight on the wheel as the speed dropped abruptly and Loras' car went whizzing past. They'd been fighting for the last half lap and she glared at his taillights as she tried to get up to speed up again. 

“What's happening?” Jaime asked just as the wheel tugged out of her hands and she lost control, the car doing a quick spin that had her body pressed hard against the fibre shell at her side until she went whirling into the gravel along the edge of the track, and dust and dirt puffed up in a cloud around her. “Brienne?” The thin line of anxiety in his voice was impossible to miss. 

“I'm okay,” she coughed, wiping at her visor. “Something happened to the engine. It shut off, I lost steering.” 

“Arya will look into the data. Are you hurt?”

“No.” Though her side was tender from where gravity had shoved her against the side of the car. “I'm getting out.” 

She waited next to her car for the return truck to come take them back to the garage, resting her hand on the intake as she watched the other cars rush by. The recovery vehicle took awhile to arrive, rumbling up slowly while she sweated under the Dornish sun, unstrapping the top of her jumpsuit and letting it fall to her waist so she was only in her Nomex shirt on top. There weren't any places for fans out here, and the track workers hadn't bothered to come out this far after they realized there was no real damage. When the recovery vehicle finally arrived, the driver hopped out and glared at her with watery blue eyes. 

“Knew you were bound to wreck it,” he muttered as he maneuvered the lift to pick up her beloved car and haul it on to the flatbed. Though it galled her to remain quiet, Brienne just shrugged and climbed into the cab, watching as he set the car onto the truck and then strapped it down. The drive back to the garage was silent and tense, and Brienne stared out the window at the crowds as they rumbled slowly by, accompanied by a number of sympathetic cheers and smug jeers. 

When she hopped back out at the garage several minutes later, Bronn was waiting for her looking contrite. 

“Sorry, Chief,” he said as he took her helmet and neck brace and handed them off to Podrick. “We let you down.”

“It was just a mechanical problem, I know you’ll fix it.” She squeezed his shoulder and he nodded with determination before leaving to oversee the car’s release back into the garage. 

Jaime approached from where he’d been waiting a short distance away. “Looks like the power unit had some issues from the changes,” he explained. “Arya is making tweaks and Bronn and the team will work as late as it takes to get you ready for the race tomorrow.”

“Can I help?”

“Absolutely not. Your job is to eat a healthy meal and get a good night’s sleep. Syrio has some pre-race exercises for you in the morning so you’ll need to be up early for that.”

“I thought Formula drivers were supposed to live like rockstars?”

“Only the bad ones,” Jaime smirked. “You do get to spend some quality time with me this afternoon though: we need to talk about your tire management for tomorrow, and Addam had some thoughts on how you took corners eight and nine. But first,” he gestured behind them where a growing shuffling announced the appearance of the media again. 

Brienne sighed. “If we must.” 

They approached the low barrier and immediately the noise picked up as the reporters jockeyed for their attention. She was surprised to see Melisandre again, but she called on Myles first; she’d found he generally asked solid questions, and as a local Sunspear newscaster he seemed appreciative of going before the national media. 

“What happened with your car?” he asked. 

“Simple power unit failure,” Jaime said. “Nothing our team can’t have fixed by tomorrow.”

“How did your first spinout feel?”

Brienne smiled a little. “Like a really intense carnival ride. Peck.” 

“How do you feel about your performance today?”

“I was really happy with how the car performed in Q1 and I’m proud of making it to P-15 for my first race.” She turned to an unfamiliar face and nodded at the man to go next. 

“How would you like to respond to the rumors today that you earned your spot this season by seducing Petyr Baelish?”

The words filtered into her head in a jumble, each of them making sense individually but making no sense as a complete question. “What?” she managed. Jaime was ramrod straight next to her. 

“There are reports that you and Petyr Baelish-“

“Where the fuck did you hear that?” Jaime said in a voice so soft and dangerous the man went pale around his glasses. 

“Just around,” the man said, nervously swallowing. “I heard some whispers in the paddock.” 

“The next time you hear these whispers, feel free to point out the offender to me.” Jaime raised his voice so it filtered all the way to the back of the crowd. “If any of you hear someone repeating this baseless bullshit and tell me who’s spreading it, we’ll give you an exclusive ten minutes on whatever subject you want. If I hear it from one of you again, you’ll get nothing from us for the rest of the season. Understood?” There was a murmured assent from the crowd and Jaime tugged Brienne’s arm and led her to the back of the garage. He shoved his hand through his hair and stalked in a tight circle like a wild animal looking for escape. 

“Do you think it was Tywin?” Brienne asked as she watched him, and Jaime laughed once, sharply. 

“Of course it was. And F1 is a group of gossiping old hens, so it’s too late to contain it, no matter how absurd it is.” 

“Is it absurd?” she asked quietly, and Jaime looked so shocked that she almost smiled. “Not that I would try and seduce Baelish, but that I didn’t earn this spot. The best lies have some truth.”

“Then this is a shitty lie because there’s no truth to it at all.” He glanced around the garage and pulled her further into the hall where they were out of sight of the ever-present cameras. “We talked about this.”

“We did. But being here, watching the other drivers…you all worked so hard for so long to earn these spots.” 

“So did you.”

“Not by driving.” 

“Brienne.” He grabbed her arms with both of his hands, his prosthetic one cool and slightly awkward. His grip control got better each day he used it, but she’d noticed it slipped when he was emotional. Jaime took a breath and the fingers curled more firmly. “I’m not just saying this as your partner, or your race engineer, but as someone who has dedicated most of his life to racing: you deserve to be here. You killed that first qualifying run today; you put in the work and the time and you barely complain. You’ve come up through different ranks, which just gives you a fresh perspective on the whole thing. You might not have followed the same path I did, but you still deserve this chance as much as anyone. Nobody’s putting an unearned trophy in your hands, you’re not getting accolades just for showing up. You’ve got more expectation on you than anyone on the grid. If you’ve ever believed me about anything, believe me about this.” 

She wanted to; she wanted to be rid of the siren song of doubt that seemed to always lie in wait offshore. The airy euphoria from earlier had been dragged out and solidified into heavy reality once more and she wanted to break it all apart and leave the pieces behind. Brienne took his wrists and brought his hands against her heart, flesh and plastic both. “I believe you,” she said, and if she was still slightly lying, Jaime seemed willing to believe her, too.


	31. March (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you ready for this?” He wasn't joking now, his tone steady and serious. 
> 
> “Yes,” she said firmly, and the lights flicked on one at a time. A lifetime passed between the onset of each red light, time suspended in slowly oozing tar, her breathing so drawn-out she could feel it expanding and deflating each cell in her lungs, could feel the adrenaline as it traveled to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her toes. Brienne briefly shut her eyes just before the last red circle lit and when she opened them again, she stared hard at the five bright lights, had enough time to inhale in sync with the tens of thousands of fans waiting anxiously with her, before all five lights went out, and the race was on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The race season officially begins! To help you all with tracking how the battle between Lannister Corp and Evenstar Racing is progressing over the season, I'm starting each race chapter with their points in the standings. 
> 
> To all of you who have started watching Drive to Survive and are excited about the first F1 GP happening next weekend: HELLO. Feel free to DM me at my tumblr (ajoblotofjunk) to talk F1 any time, whether we're mutuals or not. (I'm posting a little early this week, but I've been convinced it's already Friday all day so I'm going with it.)

**Lannister Corp Racing: 0 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 0 pts**

Brienne woke the next morning in their suite at the Bright Hotel, got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and immediately threw up. Jaime found her there curled on her knees on the cold tile and he crouched down next to her, rubbing his hand soothingly over her hair and down her back. 

“Don't worry, I threw up my first time, too.” 

“You were seventeen.” 

“Doesn't matter. Everyone feels like this their first F1 race. Ask Addam later, he'll tell you. He started throwing up the day before.” 

She tilted her head a little to look at Jaime, who was watching her with a gently amused smile. “Really?”

“Really. You want me to start the shower for you?”

“Are you sure I can't just stay here and forfeit?”

“Nope. Shower and then we go meet Syrio in the gym.” Brienne groaned but she let Jaime lift her back to her feet and get started on her day. He kept up a steady stream of chatter as they readied, trying to distract her and put her at ease, she knew, but she still wasn’t able to eat anything for breakfast and barely swallowed down a glass of water while everyone else loaded up on the buffet. 

On the bus she listened to everyone’s excited conversations around her, her forehead pressed to the cool window glass while Jaime held her hand and rubbed small circles on the top with his thumb. 

“How are _you_ doing?” she asked as the track came into view once more. 

“Let’s just say having you to worry about makes it easier for me to ignore my own nerves.” 

“Glad I could help,” she said on a small laugh and he squeezed her hand warmly. 

They ignored the media waiting for them, leaving Pia and Bronn to answer questions on their behalf, saying they had lots to do before the start of the race and Brienne would be part of the pre-race press conference in a bit. By the time one of the IAF representatives came to collect Brienne, she’d walked around the entire track with Jaime, Addam, and Bronn, and every step had done more to calm her than any well-meaning platitude. 

All of the drivers were at the pre-race media opp, arranged in two rows at tiered tables. She had been directed to sit between Renly and Lancel, with Loras, Robb, Jon, Oberyn, and Theon composing the rest of their table in the front, and the other drivers at the table behind and above them. Directly behind her was Ramsay Bolton, with his new teammate Alyn on one side and Ron Connington on the other, and she could barely concentrate with so many enemies – and one uncertain ally – immediately surrounding her. 

The media arranged themselves in the chairs and once they were settled, Baelish stepped into the room, his gaze jumping right over Brienne as he briefly took in the drivers. 

“Welcome to the first race of the season,” he said to the audience from the side of the table where Theon sat nearest the door. “First I want to extend my gratitude to our partners in the media for all the good work you do helping promote and support IAF and the sport. We appreciate your unbiased and clear-eyed reporting, especially given the last few months of seemingly nonstop news. IAF, and I in particular, are dedicated to ensuring our sport continues to operate with the utmost integrity. We value our fans’ experience too much to cheapen it with any sort of disgusting rumors and I’ll thank you, as well, to not share those.” Petyr was distinctly not looking at her, but Brienne felt his, and everyone else’s, attention laser focused on her anyway. “Let’s concentrate on what we all really want to know today, which is why Renly Baratheon continues to be the best-dressed driver in all of F1.” The crowd erupted in hearty laughter, Brienne only loosely joining in. Petyr gave a small bow to the drivers and then turned to the media. 

“Melisandre, you look lovely today, my dear. What’s your question?” 

Melisandre smiled, a pretty curl of her bright red lips, but Brienne could see it didn’t reflect in her eyes at all. “Thank you, Petyr.” She met Brienne’s eyes and the other woman’s gaze was almost imploring. “My question is for the bottom row of drivers: Brienne Tarth was in the top five in Q1 yesterday. What are your thoughts on her first, rather remarkable, time there?”

Brienne blinked, taken aback by the other woman’s question. She was setting the men up to be generous towards Brienne, and to look like arrogant or misogynistic fools if they weren’t, while letting Brienne off the hook entirely from having to answer. It was an unexpectedly thoughtful approach, especially from her. She wondered what angle Melisandre was going for. 

Robb jumped in first. “My thought was that I was annoyed I’d have yet another competitive challenger out there on the field,” he said lightly, leaning forward to shoot Brienne a quick grin. She smiled hesitantly back. 

“I was impressed by her handling,” Oberyn said. “She seems like she’ll be a real threat on the corners.” 

“That’s funny, I admired the way she attacked the straightaways,” Renly said, and he smiled at her, too, bright and charming and she had to restrain a laugh at how her younger self would have been an incoherent mess if he’d looked at her like that and how little it affected her now. But it was hard to be taken in by Renly’s charm anymore when Jaime’s was a nonstop assault every day just by him existing. 

“What about you, Lancel?” Melisandre urged, and Brienne kept her gaze forward, hovering over the heads of the media and the lenses of the cameras. Lancel tensed next to her. 

“I thought she was fine,” he said tightly. 

“Next question,” Petyr said, pointing at someone Brienne didn’t know, moving everyone smoothly on. The questions were mostly uneventful, and even the one for all the drivers from a buzzy entertainment site about what type of tire they would be was funny until Connington answered with a boasting, “ultra-hard” she could feel him directing at her back. But otherwise everyone was well-behaved and no one seemed interested in singling Brienne out at all, until Petyr called on Peck, who gave her an open smile. 

“How was it waking up this morning to your first race day?” he asked. 

She leaned towards her microphone a little and said, “I threw up.” The laughter was immediate, but most of it didn’t feel cruel, although she could hear the underlying sneers of the chuckling from behind her. 

“Nervous?” Peck asked. 

“Or pregnant,” Euron said and this time the laughter had a harder edge. 

“Nervous,” Brienne said firmly, knowing there were spots of color in her cheeks. “It’s such a big day, of course I'm nervous.” 

“I threw up before my first race,” Theon said from the edge, and she glanced at him gratefully. “And my second one, actually.” The reporters laughed again, cheerful. 

“Who else threw up before their first race?” Petyr asked, and Brienne looked around as Theon, Jon, Loras, and even Renly all raised their hands. She chanced a quick look behind her and saw that Hyle had his hand up, too, and he smirked down at her. 

“Looks like you’re in good company, Brienne,” Renly said slyly, “with those who were also nervous and those who are lying.” 

That time, she laughed, too. 

The rest of the press conference went quickly and then Petyr called an end to it and the drivers filtered out one door while the media exited through the other. In the green room, she approached Theon, who was hovering by himself. 

“Thank you for speaking up about your first race,” she said. 

He shrugged a little. “It was true. Thanks for taking Asha on your team.”

“She’s really good, we’re lucky to have her.” 

“I’m just glad she’s getting to do what she wants and it doesn’t require her to bother me, too.” He nodded at her and then exited the green room and as she started to follow him, Hyle fell into step next to her. 

“Did you really throw up?” he asked. 

“Did you?”

“I have less reason to lie about that than you.” 

“Why would I lie about something like that?” 

Hyle gave her a knowing look. “The sympathy vote? Get the judges on your side, play up the nervous rookie angle with the other drivers?”

Brienne halted and turned to glare at him. “You think I’m trying to, what, massage the field so I can do better?”

“Everybody takes whatever advantage they can; you’d be a fool not to, as well. Even you could get at least some of those men on your side out of some misplaced chivalry.” 

Her whole body pinched together in disapproval. “That’s awful.” 

“That’s the sport.” He stared at her intently and then shook his head. “Gods, you really were just being honest, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was.” 

“Let me give you some advice since your boyfriend seems unwilling to do it: don’t give them all of you all the time. On the track is the only place you should be yourself. Everywhere else you need to remember this is entertainment and we’re all just playing a role. Renly and Loras are just teammates, Robb Stark is just a naturally talented winner, Oberyn is just the charmingly lecherous competition. Figure out what your role is going to be and stick with it, give the fans what they expect, or there’ll be nothing left of you by the end of the season.” 

“I’m just me,” she protested. 

Hyle looked annoyed. “Be less you.” 

“Why do you even care? After what you did.” 

“What I did _years_ ago? How many times do I have to apologize for that?” he huffed. “I offered you a job with my team since then, or have you forgotten that brief period where you led me on like you were going to take that job before you abandoned me?”

They were alone in the green room now and she was glad because she couldn’t control the sharp rise of her voice as she yelped, “_Abandoned you_?”

“You told me you’d consider me, but you had this waiting all along.” 

“No, I didn’t, Hyle. I was going to turn down your offer before this even came along.” 

Hyle’s jaw clenched, his hazel eyes sharp with hurt. “This is exactly the sort of situation where you should really be less you,” he gritted, before turning and leaving her alone in the room. A few seconds later, Jaime came in, his brows raised. 

“Why did Hyle Hunt just drop a very inventive expletive my way as I passed him in the hall?” 

“I bruised his ego,” she said, and Jaime snorted. “How did I do?”

“You were great. Pia says the response is positive.” 

“I didn’t say it to get a certain type of response.” She frowned. 

“I know you didn’t,” he said, returning her frown. “You’re just being you. People like _you_.”

“What happens when they don’t like me?”

Jaime shrugged. “Then fuck ‘em.” 

“Aren’t my fans expecting a certain…something? Shouldn’t I be less me?”

“Less you?” Jaime looked so astonished by the concept that she wanted to kiss him. “Why would you do that?”

“Hyle said I should do it to protect myself. Well, that and to manipulate the race judges and maybe other drivers to let me win.” 

“Ah.” Jaime scratched his beard as he considered her. “I won’t bother with the second part, since I know you too well for that, but he may have a point about the first part. You can’t give over every piece of your life to the media; you need to save something for yourself. But that doesn’t mean you have to be less you, just that you should be thoughtful about what you share.” 

“Yet another non-racing thing to try to remember,” Brienne sighed, and he squeezed her shoulder. 

“I’ll help you with that one. But you do have some actual racing things to do now, if you’re ready?”

“Very ready,” she said, relieved. 

He walked with her out of the room and back into the noise of the growing crowd. “It’s almost time for driver’s parade,” Jaime said, leading her back to the Evenstar garage. “Sunspear decided to do separate cars for each constructor this year so you’ll be on your own instead of having to be crammed on a truck with everyone else. Yours is at the end, behind the Dothrak team. After parade you’ll go straight to weigh-in, and then you’ll come back to the garage for last prep before we get you out to the grid.” Brienne’s eyes wandered over the milling crowds and the crews from various teams darting all over. She could hear power tools, clashing music, reporters talking about the season in front of cameras. 

“-excitement of the new season is at fever pitch this year as all eyes turn to Brienne Tarth-“

“-st woman in decades to enter the grid-“

“-promising Q1, but spun out in Q2 due reportedly to a power unit failure. Let’s hope she doesn’t have the same issue today, or the first woman to race in twenty-five years will be a disappointment to all the female fans watching.“

Her stomach shuddered and twisted and Jaime grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Try to ignore it,” he said quietly as they hurried onward. 

“How did you do it?”

The look on his face told her all she needed to know. They were nearly at the garage and excited, high-pitched shouting came from the nearby barriers. A group of girls, most of them in makeshift Evenstar Racing shirts, were waving and yelling at her. It was the first merchandise she’d seen in their colors; they hadn’t had the time or resources to prioritize making and selling their own, and IAF had only offered the bare minimum at the official website, a fact which annoyed Pia constantly but Brienne was far too busy to spare it more than the briefest acknowledgement. These girls had obviously gotten an image from the internet somewhere and made their own shirts, the edges of the logo blurry, the colors not quite right, but she felt her heart warm seeing them and their enthusiasm. 

“Go talk to them,” Jaime urged, and she glanced over at him. 

“I have driver’s parade.” 

“It can wait. I’ll run interference with the officials. Go on.” 

Brienne chewed briefly on her lip, and then nodded and headed directly for the girls, who started hopping up and down giddily as she approached. She couldn’t stop the equally giddy smile on her face. “Hi,” she said shyly when she got there. 

“Will you sign my program?” one asked, just as another said, “We had to make our own shirts because those assholes didn’t have any good stuff on their site!” 

Pressing her lips together to keep from laughing – and from commiserating too loudly – Brienne held out her hand to take the first program shoved towards her and the silver sharpie with it. She signed half a dozen of those, and then the girls presented the arms, backs, and necklines of their shirts for her signature as well. Three-quarters of the way through, one of the shorter girls turned and proudly showed Brienne the back of her shirt, and Brienne nearly choked on her surprise to see the words “Brienne + Jaime = ❤️” on the back. After she’d signed it, the girl turned around again, her brown eyes big and worried. 

“Is my shirt okay?” she asked. “I just love you two so much, especially your radio chatter. I hope I can have a relationship like yours someday.” 

“Uh, yeah, it’s…I’m fine with it.” 

“Do you think Mr. Lannister would mind?”

Brienne chuckled and shook her head. “Honestly he’d probably ask you to make him one, too.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Jaime, who was smiling in the sunshine as he charmed the IAF lackey that had come to get her for the parade. He looked like a sliver of the sun itself, his skin golden, his eyes bright, his athletic body so casually sexy as he leaned against the garage wall that she sighed a little in appreciation. He looked her way and caught her staring, and the smug grin he sent her was the most annoying, appealing thing she’d seen in her life. She loved him so much it made her heart ache and stretch in her chest. 

“Are you two going to get married?” the girl asked, dragging Brienne’s attention back. 

“That’s a bit nosy, don’t you think?” Brienne replied, flushing red. 

The girl looked sheepish and nodded, and Brienne finished signing the last items as Jaime came over. 

“Sorry to disappoint you ladies, but Brienne needs to leave for the parade now,” he said, smiling winningly at them. Brienne watched at least half of them go doe-eyed and nervous under his attention and she hid her amusement. She'd first met Jaime when he was all sharp edges and sneering grins; meeting him as he was now, where the sharpness was fine-tuned to be delicious instead of devastating, would have made her equally flustered. 

“You should sign some of their stuff,” she said as they walked back to the IAF rep who was failing to hide his impatience. 

“No, they’re here for you. This is your time.” He gestured for her to follow the IAF rep and she leaned over and kissed Jaime quickly on the cheek before she did, leaving him beaming in the garage. 

Brienne introduced herself to her driver, a goateed Dornishman who just nodded and looked bored by the whole affair, which she was happy to put up with given the likely alternatives. She sat on top of the seat in the back of the convertible, gripping the headrests tightly as he started them out onto the track behind all the others. The crowd was already cheering for everyone else as her car followed at the end, which made it impossible to miss when the noise dipped and changed as she drove by. 

In the heat, the applause shifted from excited to polite, and with the drop in volume she abruptly made out some scattered booing as well. Brienne wanted to slide down into the seat and hide but she waved half-heartedly as they drove around the track at a speed she could beat just by walking. At the end of sector one, there was a sudden pocket of wild, joyfully yelling fans that overwhelmed every other sound with their support. When Brienne straightened and waved at them, they only got louder and she turned her face towards it like she was inhaling the invigorating scent of the sea. She encountered another pocket of them half a mile down, and then another a mile after that. Brienne clung to them like buoys in an intimidating ocean, the only places where she could breathe through the rock in her chest. Finally, after what felt like hours, her driver deposited her outside of the weigh-in room and Podrick was there with her helmet and safety gear. He handed it off to her with a sympathetic smile. The parade had been entirely televised and she knew he and the others had seen – and heard – the crowd's response. 

“Th-they’ll walk you through the weigh-in p-process inside,” he said. And then, quietly, added, “We love you,” with so much fierce belief she almost burst into tears. Pod was blushing furiously as he hurried off, but he’d left her with renewed strength as she stepped into the cool interior of the room. 

Brienne blinked, her eyes adjusting after the brightness of the sunshine, and as she did she looked around hopefully for Robb. None of the Direwolf, Sunspear, or Stag Motors drivers were there yet, and neither was Lancel, though everyone else had gathered, and most of them were staring balefully at her. It was the worst case scenario for weigh-in, and she drew Pod's last words around her like armor as she faced them all. 

“Brienne Tarth.” Connington stepped forward. She hadn't been face-to-face with him since that moment years ago at Griffin. She took a steadying breath against the wave of memory; tried to recall instead the image of Ron cowering before a furious Jaime in the bar. “You haven’t changed a bit,” Ron sneered. 

She wished briefly that Jaime were there, only because she was certain he'd have the perfect witty comeback. Her own tongue seemed too big for her mouth and she couldn't think of anything beyond a casual shrug. 

“Eloquent as ever, too. How do you think you can keep up with the big boys? You couldn’t even hack it in F2.”

The memory of his cruel laughter reared up for a moment before she firmly squashed it back down. “I know I can,” she managed. 

“The only helmet a woman should wear is the kind they give her at the beauty salon,” said Euron Greyjoy. That set most of the drivers to snickering, but not all of them. Brienne took note of those who were quiet: both Dothrak drivers, Daario from Dragonfire, and Hyle. 

“I heard you convinced Baelish to let you in with your cunt,” Connington prodded, and Brienne inhaled sharply, her arms curling tightly around her helmet and safety gear. 

“That’s a lie,” she gritted out. 

“Is it? Didn’t you do that with Lannister, too?” 

“No.” 

Connington looked over at Hyle. “Weren’t you trying to get her on your team? Was she finally going to fuck you, too? All women do look the same in the dark, I suppose.” 

Brienne could barely bring herself to look at Hyle, and when she did, his plain face was unreadable until he turned to Ron and gave him a sardonic smile. “You need to get laid and stop worrying about what other people are doing with their cocks.” 

It wasn’t a defense, exactly, but it at least shut Ron up, and Brienne was grateful for that minuscule kindness. 

“It doesn’t matter why you’re here now, you’ll never even finish a race,” Ramsay joined in, his oily voice making her skin itch unpleasantly. She knew she wasn’t even close to keeping the disgust and anger off her features as she faced him. He may not have directly touched Jaime’s car, but he’d played his part in the crash, and the minimal punishment he’d received still stuck in her like a knife. 

“I beat you in qualifying.” 

“Q1,” he said dismissively. “You couldn’t even make it out of Q2.” 

“I’ll make it today.” 

Ramsay’s lip curled. “Doubtful. Or would you like to place a wager on that?” he asked meaningfully.

Brienne imagined slamming her helmet into the man’s face, felt her fingers grip the edge as if for purchase, when Robb and Jon entered the weigh-in room. “Haven't you all even gotten started yet?” Robb asked, his gaze skimming the men arranged in a loose semi-circle around her. She hadn't fully realized how alone she was until Robb was there, how hard her heart was pounding. He headed straight for Brienne and gave her a welcoming smile. “Come on, I’ll go first and then I can walk you through it.” 

He did, directing her to the sign-in table, helping her navigate the process with the judges, and shielding her from any further audible comments, at least, by talking louder than the others could mutter. Once they'd all finished and had filed back out onto the hot asphalt where the media waited impatiently, he offered his hand. “Good luck out there today.” 

“Thank you,” she said, shaking it, hoping he knew all she was thanking him for. The cameras caught every moment but he'd earned the photo op for how he'd treated her where they couldn't see him. 

“Don't expect the same consideration on the track,” he said, smiling with bright white teeth. 

“I'd be insulted if you did,” she shot back, and his perfect smile turned real. 

Jaime was waiting for her, too, watching her with anxious eyes. They fell into step, their strides matching as they made the long walk back to the Evenstar garage. 

“Doing okay?” he asked quietly.

“It's been a long day.” 

He glanced at her, his lips twisting in sympathy. “Hardest part is over.”

Brienne peered into Lannister Corp's garage as they walked by, saw Kevan and Theodan talking about something, the familiar faces of Lancel's crew hustling around the car. Tywin wasn't visible and when they'd made it past the garage, Jaime exhaled as though he'd been holding his breath. 

The rest of the walk was silent, both of them wrapped up in their own nervousness, and when they reached the garage Jaime squeezed her hand but left her to get into the car with Podrick's help while he gathered his headphones and checked out the latest readouts on the car. 

Addam came over just as Brienne was sitting in the car and reconnecting her steering wheel. “Hey,” he said, his eyes crinkling with warmth. 

“Any last advice?” she asked. Her stomach was jumping again, even as empty as it was. 

He crouched down so he was eye-level with her and his face was calm, calmer than Jaime's for sure. “You can't win on the first corner, but you can lose there. Just take it one corner at a time.”

“One corner at a time,” she repeated shakily. “Oh gods, I'm gonna throw up again.” 

“You'll be fine,” Addam said, his voice deep and reassuring, and she almost believed him. “Besides, if you throw up now you'll have to drive in puke and nobody wants that.”

Brienne glanced over at Jaime, who was tapping his fingers restlessly against his leg, his brow furrowed as he stared at the screens. “Will you give him some sort of advice, too?” she asked. “He looks as nervous as I am.” 

Addam looked over his shoulder and then snorted. “I'll do my best. Jaime's not really a low emotions kind of guy, as you know.” Brienne huffed a resigned laugh and Addam patted the top of her helmet. “One corner at a time,” he reminded her as he stood and she nodded and pulled her visor down. 

She pulled her rumbling car out of the garage and tried to tell herself this was just like free practice or winter testing, but it was impossible to trick herself out of her nerves when she rolled to her spot on the grid and parked, the other cars in two neat rows ahead of her and some behind. Her crew rushed over to put the tire covers back on to keep them warm, swarmed over the car one more time after she climbed out of it. 

“The car's ready, Chief,” Bronn said at her side, his arms folded over his chest while he oversaw the others making final adjustments. “We worked half the night. You're ready to go.” 

“Thanks, Bronn.” Brienne felt like she couldn't get a full breath in and she flexed and clenched her fingers at her sides. Jaime was in the gantry already, talking to Addam. 

“It's just like any other drive, except everybody's on the track with you,” Bronn offered. 

“Right.”

“You've done hundreds of laps with her by now, she'll take care of you, all you have to do is steer straight.” 

“Got it.” She wondered if she should have had more water before the race; her mouth felt full of sand. 

“You only have to cross the finish line, it doesn't matter what position.” 

“Okay.”

“None of this is helping, is it?”

“No,” she moaned unhappily. 

The thirty second alert went off and Bronn shrugged. “Well it's the best I've got and it's about time for formation lap. Go get 'em, Chief.” 

Brienne clambered back into the car on trembling legs, grateful she would at least be sitting through this. The crew yanked the tire warmers off of the car and everyone scrambled away and it was her and her car and the other drivers as they followed the safety car around for the formation lap. 

“You hear me?” Jaime asked, his voice rebounding confidently in her helmet. 

“Loud and clear.” 

“Are you ready for this?”

_No_ she thought. “I guess,” was the best she could muster as she wove her car back and forth. 

“Let's try that again. Are you ready for this?”

“Yes?”

He chuckled. “Good enough for now. Addam tells me I need to – and I quote – get my shit together so I don't fuck things up for you by being an emotional mess.”

“I didn't tell him that,” she muttered. 

“He's not wrong though. I promise I will be cool as a cucumber, Wrench. Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.” 

She'd felt Jaime's mouth enough times and enough places on her body she knew that could never be true, but she appreciated the sentiment behind it. “Ask me again,” she said as they came around the last corner and headed back for their spots on the grid. 

“Are you ready for this?” He wasn't joking now, his tone steady and serious. 

“Yes,” she said firmly, and the lights flicked on one at a time. A lifetime passed between the onset of each red light, time suspended in slowly oozing tar, her breathing so drawn-out she could feel it expanding and deflating each cell in her lungs, could feel the adrenaline as it traveled to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her toes. Brienne briefly shut her eyes just before the last red circle lit and when she opened them again, she stared hard at the five bright lights, had enough time to inhale in sync with the tens of thousands of fans waiting anxiously with her, before all five lights went out, and the race was on. 

She accelerated, her car leaping ahead of Quellon Botley, Euron's new Kraken teammate, who was at p-16 next to her, and then sliding in-between the two Dothrak cars in p-13 and p-14 in front of her as well. 

“Good job,” Jaime said as she kept her car tight on Daario's tail while they arced into the first corner. There were wheels near her on every side, the middle of the pack a roaring, agitated crowd as they came within inches of each other and managed to not touch. It was loud even with her helmet and balaclava and earpieces but Brienne focused through the noise, the single red brake light of Daario's car just ahead her only concern. At her side, Drogo's Dothrak car fell back and away, but Rhaego's kept pushing next to her and she shifted gears, urging her car forward a little more, a little closer to Daario's until they all had to brake hard for the next corner. 

“Back off a little,” Jaime said. “You'll make Daario nervous and he'll brake too soon and clip you. There are tail winds down the straight in sector two, you can use those to try for a pass.” 

Brienne gave Daario a little space – not much, but enough that she saw his car steady a little as he drove, enough that Rhaego's car pulled up next to her. She had to shake him, he kept pushing her wide on her corners, but the next turn was on her side and this time she pushed him wide and he went too far and veered into the kerb enough she was able to pull ahead of him. 

“Straightaway coming up,” Jaime said. 

The pack of cars had thinned out, with Daario a couple seconds ahead of her and Rhaego a couple seconds behind and the rest stretched out before and behind them. No one had crashed in the first corner, but she had no idea where anyone else was, and didn't care. Her entire race now was with Daario in his Dragonfire car. One corner at a time. One car at a time. 

As they pulled out of the last corner before the straightaway, Brienne accelerated until she was drafting off of Daario's slipstream, and then as her car whined greedily, she yanked the wheel and shifted gears and the momentum carried her hurtling past him, until she cut back in front of him at the next corner, and in her rearview she saw him brake early and she pulled even further ahead. 

“Nice!” Jaime cheered and Brienne re-tightened her grip and looked for her next challenge. 

“Who's next?”

There was quiet for a second and then: “Connington.” A single word delivered with all the weight of what they both felt about the man. 

“Perfect,” she said, narrowing her eyes. 

It took eight laps before she was able to get near him, his red and white car a taunt in front of her. 

It took her one late-braking curve swung tight and fast along the inside edge to pass him. 

“Fuck yes!” Jaime crowed in her ear, and she grinned and pushed onward. 

After that she was on her own for awhile as each car attacked the middle of the race, the first set of cars pulling in to pit and get their initial set of fresh tires. She and Jaime had talked – and argued – over several days about whether they would try for a one or two pit stop strategy. Jaime had pushed for two, insisting she was still too new to tire management to do the whole race on only two sets of tires, that the third set would give her a much-needed bonus at the end when the other one-stop teams were wearing down. Brienne had fought long and hard for a one-stop strategy, banking on Sunspear being a relatively easy track where they could afford to test her tire management skills because she'd driven it more than any other on the schedule. Eventually she'd won him over, and so she powered on as first Hyle, then both Stag Motors cars, boxed and she continued to creep up in position. 

A little over halfway through the race, her neck drenched with sweat, certain her hands would never stop vibrating, Jaime called her in to box. It was almost a relief to slow down, although her brain had more trouble downshifting than her car, her mind still whizzing, processing every little thing at super-speed. She parked right on the line and in the three seconds it took for the team to change her tires, she saw Jaime craning his neck from the gantry to catch her eyes, she saw Arya in the garage giving her a thumbs up, she registered each individual whir of the air guns as they first unscrewed then screwed back in the new lugnuts. When Bronn yanked the front jack away and her signal light went green, Brienne tore back out into the pit lane, her brain eagerly eating up the speed again. 

“Lancel's going to be coming up on your side as you exit,” Jaime warned her as she gathered momentum coming down the long gentle curve of the exit lane. “It'll be close.” 

Even with the warning, Brienne gasped as Lancel whizzed by her so near she could clearly see the sponsor logos on his car, could almost reach out and touch them. Startled, she swerved away, braking abruptly, and in a moment knew she'd made a terrible mistake. 

Under her feet she felt the tires lock up, and though she struggled to keep her car on the track until they could regain their grip, the curve came up too fast, and so did the wall, and she jerked the wheel hard to finish the spin so the side of her car, instead of the front of it, went slamming into the barrier with a roaring crash. 

She couldn't breathe for a handful of heartbeats, her body a concussive weight, debris spinning up and out in the air around her like fireworks. There was a rushing waterfall of noise in her ears and as she blinked away the smoke and the dizziness, Jaime's voice called her name, sounding very far away. 

“Brienne, can you hear me? Are you all right? Brienne!”

“I'm okay,” she coughed, though her torso felt like she'd just been trampled by an elephant. “I can hear you, Jaime. I'm okay.”

“Thank the Seven,” he exhaled. “They're coming to help you out, do you see them?”

She looked up, saw the safety vests of the track workers, and waved her hand their way indicating she was awake and conscious. 

“Good. Let them help you,” he insisted, and she wasn't going to fight that. Brienne wasn't convinced she could have gotten out of the car alone even if she'd wanted to. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone waving the yellow flag, knew the safety car would be pulling out onto the track soon. Her car looked like a disaster, and she kept her helmet on to hide the tears from the cameras watching her hungrily from behind the barrier.

“Fuck,” she said softly. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's fine. Don't-” he cut himself off. “We'll talk about it when you get back.” 

_Right. The audio feed_, she thought. It was easy to forget every second of their communications were being recorded for public consumption. Brienne pressed her teeth together to hold back the sob that threatened at the base of her throat and let the track workers and medic check her over, let them usher her into a golf cart and start the drive back to the garage when she was cleared as being uninjured. Her muscles were already starting to tighten as the adrenaline and shock wore off, and by the time they bulled through the crowd of media surrounding the Evenstar garage, she had her arms gripped around her body to keep from shaking. Jaime was there before the cart even came to a stop, wrapping her up and almost carrying her out, until she put her feet down and stumbled her way to her driver's room still in his arms, the shouts of the reporters barely even registering. 

While he closed the door behind them she stood in the middle of the room, staring around, feeling the weight of Jaime's and the team's and the fans' hopes that she'd let down. It hit her harder than the impact of the crash. They had all put their faith in her – Jaime trusting her to be able to take down Lannister Corp, her crew working through the night to fix her car, the eager fans making their own t-shirts – and she couldn't even finish the race. Ramsay had been right. Brienne's chest hitched and she bit down hard on her lip, fumbling at her helmet, yanking it and the neck brace and her balaclava off and sucking in air. She couldn't _breathe_ through any of it. 

Jaime moved in front of her, gently brushed her hair back from her dirt- and tear-streaked face. He was blurry through her unshed tears, and he brushed his thumb over her cheeks to wipe the rest away. She watched his chest moving slow and steady and tried to match her breathing to his, tried to wrap his calm around herself. 

“You're really not injured?” he asked, his voice soft, worried. There was fear in his eyes, something soul-deep that she knew well from when he'd crashed in Harrenhal. 

“I'm really not,” she whispered, gasping. 

“Then none of the rest of it matters,” he said, pulling her against him, tucking her head into his neck and letting her cry.

* * *

After Brienne stopped crying in her driver room, Jaime sat her down, wiped her face with a cool washcloth and let her sit quietly while he left to handle the media. He had to take a minute to himself in the hallway first, bending over, hands on his knees while he hung his head and fought down panic. That accident had been so close to what had happened to him at Harrenhal. If Lancel had turned into Brienne's car the way Ramsay had turned into his-- 

Jaime exhaled, a shaky half-breath, and reminded himself it wasn't the same. There were no Vargo Hoats on their team, the betting ring had been shut down, and Tywin's hands were tied by Lannister Corp's money problems and Baelish's keen eye. 

Still, Jaime needed another minute in the empty hallway before he felt steady enough to face the reporters. 

They were targeted in their questions once he arrived, asking about what had happened and why, how she was doing, how disappointed Jaime was in her performance. That one got his hackles up. 

“I'm not disappointed in Brienne at all,” he snapped. “You seem to be overlooking this, but Brienne is a rookie. It's a rough start, sure, but drivers crash all the time.” He gestured with his prosthesis at that, an exclamation point on his words. “We'll be putting in a request with IAF to review Lancel's actions as well.” 

“You don't think it was just a racing incident?” Melisandre asked. 

“We'll let IAF determine what it was.” 

An hour after the race had ended, IAF had declared it a racing incident and Lancel went unpenalized for how close he'd gotten to Brienne. Jaime knew she'd overcorrected at Lancel's approach, but it was still a bitter pill that the other driver didn't even get a warning for his reckless nearness. 

They skipped the post-race debrief and at Brienne's request he arranged a cab to the ferry to head home early, leaving Bronn and the others to stay behind and get the wrecked car and their mobile garage packed up and transported back the next day. She insisted on gathering everyone in the paddock before they left, though, shutting the media and other visitors out before she addressed the team, her shoulders slumped, her hair hanging loose in her face. Jaime studied their crew, a sea of worried faces and sympathetic eyes. 

“I just wanted to apologize,” Brienne whispered, her voice as soft as her heart. “I know you all worked so hard to get the car ready for today's race and I-” she swallowed and Jaime wanted nothing more than to drag her back into his arms, but he knew she wouldn't want that now. Instead she'd inhaled slowly before saying, “I messed all that up. I'll do better next race.”

Bronn shifted a little, his arms crossed over his chest. “Apology not accepted,” he stated, and Jaime glared at him. “Because you don't need one, unless you crashed on purpose.” 

“Of course not,” she frowned. 

“You're our driver, Chief. Sometimes you're gonna make stupid mistakes flying around the track at two hundred miles an hour in a piece of fancy plastic. It's part of the job and if you can't accept that you should quit now, because there's a lot of season left and you very well might do it again.” 

Jaime gauged Brienne's response to that, the way her plain, open face contorted with hurt and surprise and then, finally, resignation with the faintest hint of amusement under it. “All right,” she said, and Bronn nodded sharply. 

“Anything else, or can we get to dinner? Poddy's hungry, as usual.” 

“H-hey,” Pod protested weakly. 

“No, that was all,” Brienne said, sounding almost mystified by how simple it had all been. 

They scattered then, Bronn walking by Brienne and squeezing her upper arm once, briefly; Podrick giving her a swift hug before they wandered off together. Addam went up to her next, said something too quiet for Jaime to hear, but she blinked gratefully at him when he stepped away. He approached Jaime while Arya engaged Brienne. 

“You don't have to say it,” Jaime warned. 

“I know you'll take care of her,” Addam said, and his simple trust and belief that Jaime would – that he _could_ – was a seismic event in Jaime's heart. “I just wanted to make sure you were handling this okay, too. What with your recent past,” his gaze flickered down to Jaime's right hand and then back again, “I thought I'd offer to take on some of your duties for a few days if you needed time to go talk to Tarly.” 

Jaime's mouth worked silently, unprepared as he was for Addam's easy comfort. “I'll be fine,” he said. “But, thank you. That...I appreciate it.” 

Addam nodded, clapped him on the shoulder. “Just looking out for you, brother.” But then he grinned sharply. “Although I will beat you bloody if you hurt her, before I swoop in to comfort her myself, you know that, right?”

Jaime laughed, shaking his head. “I never doubted it.” 

That night, Jaime and Brienne stood on the top deck of the ferry, leaning against the railing as the boat chugged back to Tarth. He watched the waves churning rhythmically against the side of the ferry, lulling him into a peaceful trance, the salt air sharp in his lungs. Brienne had been tense since the crash, even after the meeting with the team, the drive to the dock, their first steps on the boat. She was still a tightly held line against his side, her body ready to fight or flee. Jaime wished he knew whether she needed her boyfriend or her race engineer more in this moment and opted for the latter. 

“We should debrief,” he said, lifting his voice just enough to be heard over the engine and the waves. 

“I crashed. There, we're done.” 

Jaime turned a little, resting his weight on his right forearm against the cold, flaking metal of the railing. “Why did you crash?”

Brienne wouldn't look at him, she just kept staring out at the far horizon, black on black in the night. “Because I'm a bad driver.” 

“Don't say that,” he bit out, and she did glance at him then. “Unless I was also a bad driver.”

“Harrenhal wasn't your fault,” she said quietly. 

“You think Harrenhal's the only time I crashed?”

“No, of course not.” Her cheeks were pink in the light from inside the ferry.

“And do you think I never crashed because of my own mistakes?” Brienne looked down at her hands, but the shoulders she'd held high and tight for hours eased down. “You're not a bad driver because you messed up. You're only a bad driver if you give up because of it. You learn more from the failures, and you'll do better later on because it was hard here.”

“It's not how I thought it would be.” 

“When is anything?” 

She puffed, a heavy blast of air. “I didn't truly realize last year the burden the driver shouldered. The responsibility.” 

“A wise woman told me there's a whole team behind the driver,” he said, his tone gentle, tilting his head to peer at her. 

“She didn't know any better.” 

“Yes, you did. You were right, then, and I'm right, now. We succeed and fail together, Brienne.” He covered her hand on the railing with his left one, and she turned hers over to link their fingers. “This isn't all on you.”

“It feels like it is.”

“I know. Now tell me again: why did you crash?” 

“Because I swerved too abruptly when Lancel came up on me. But he was awfully close.”

“He was, you're right. They should have penalized him for it, and you also should have held steadier. I'll have Addam add pit lane exits to your training.” 

“All right.”

“And next time you'll be fine.” 

She nodded, the last of her muscles relaxing. “I will.”

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Good debrief.” 

She laughed a little and when he put his arm around her she leaned against him with a sigh. “Kind of nice having you be my engineer _and_ boyfriend,” she murmured. 

“It's a two-for-one.” 

“The next big thing in F1.” 

“If we're lucky.” 

“We are,” she said, wrapping her arms tight around his body. They swayed with the movement of the ferry through the waves, and she didn't let go until they nudged gently into the dock an hour later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Euron's obnoxious helmet comment is a real thing someone said! From wikipedia: "The involvement of women in Formula One was pioneered by Italian Maria Teresa de Filippis who entered five races in the 1958 and 1959 seasons and started three scoring a best result of tenth position in the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix. In the following race in France, the race director denied her involvement, saying that "the only helmet that a woman should use is the hairdresser"." Euron is trash enough to take the place of that race director.


	32. March (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kissed her in response, a tender press of his lips to hers and Brienne was filled with fresh wonder that he loved her as intensely as he had from the first – how intensely she loved him in return – even though they saw each other every day, slept together so many nights. Had brushed their teeth together and raced each other from the bed needing to pee and bumped up against each other in the kitchen trying to get coffee. She had thought, after the first week when she'd finally said yes, that their feelings would settle to where they had been, like the seas retreating from shore after a storm. But this storm had re-arranged the shore, and even as they'd fallen into an easy domesticity, the constant energy of the waves of their hearts had not faltered or waned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, for this fic, a short chapter (the shortest one in the story so far) but what was supposed to be the last part of March was getting too long with this included, and I wanted these parts to have their own space to breathe emotionally. SO, March is now four parts and you get a bonus posting this week! Thanks to Brynn for helping me get this right.

They stepped off the ferry that night hand-in-hand, stopping under the streetlight just outside of the terminal. The few other walk-on passengers filtered around them, everyone moving with the quiet exhaustion of travelers finally home too late, tired zombies anxious to be on their way. Brienne squeezed Jaime's hand and then dropped it in order to stretch, a yawn overtaking her. The day had been physically and emotionally demanding and she was looking forward to collapsing into her own bed and sleeping for as long as her body would let her. 

She glanced at Jaime, uncertain about what he wanted. A few weeks ago when they'd returned from Sunspear after winter testing, they'd parted ways at the ferry, both of them heading to their own spaces to take care of dirty laundry and check on their homes. They'd slept at each other's places many times since Brienne had shown up at his door, but always after they'd fallen into bed for other reasons first. On a night like tonight, when neither of them had the energy for anything besides taking their shoes off, it made sense to split up again rather than go together. 

She felt entirely unwilling to do it this time though, no matter how clingy or emotional it might seem. 

“What's the plan?” he asked, his voice quiet in the darkness. 

“It's late.”

“It is. How are you doing?” 

She shook her head. “So tired I can barely see straight.” 

“I was thinking...” he looked down at their feet, bashful in a way he normally wasn't. Her heart flopped over in her chest, bursting with unexpected tenderness. “I could stay with you tonight, if you want. I wasn't sure, after the day you'd had, if you still wanted company just for sleep.” 

She brushed her fingertips lightly over his chin. “I do,” she said, and he did look at her, his eyes more gold than green in the streetlight, like a cat's. They were bright and wide with a relieved joy. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. If you're not sick of me already,” she added, shy, and he looked so dismissive of that idea she had to smile. 

He kissed her in response, a tender press of his lips to hers and Brienne was filled with fresh wonder that he loved her as intensely as he had from the first – how intensely she loved him in return – even though they saw each other every day, slept together so many nights. Had brushed their teeth together and raced each other from the bed needing to pee and bumped up against each other in the kitchen trying to get coffee. She had thought, after the first week when she'd finally said yes, that their feelings would settle to where they had been, like the seas retreating from shore after a storm. But this storm had re-arranged the shore, and even as they'd fallen into an easy domesticity, the constant energy of the waves of their hearts had not faltered or waned. 

“I'll get a ride-share for us,” he offered. 

“No, there's no need for that. There's one last bus to the stop by my house for the day, we can take that.” 

Jaime sighed, resigned, but put his phone away and took her hand once more. 

They walked over to the small bus stop a short distance away, tucking themselves into the overhang to protect against the chilly night wind blowing off of the sea. She pressed the side of her body firmly against his, relieved that he'd wanted to stay with her. Brienne had felt the loss of him and he hadn't even gone yet. How could just the idea of sleeping without him feel so wrong even though she'd spent so much more of her life alone?

Would he go home tomorrow night, instead? That felt as wrong as him leaving tonight. They weren't technically living together, had made no promises either way, but as she held his hand in the darkness, she wondered if that was a status they should officially change. 

Brienne considered asking him to live with her; the terror that he might say no – or yes. There'd be no hiding any of her last ugly flaws or quirks from him, then; she would have opened all of her home and herself to his piercing eyes, would have to acknowledge out loud that she wanted to make more permanent space for him in her life, space that would feel infinitely more empty if he left. 

Not that she hadn't already carved that space out for him in her heart, and she trusted him with that as much as she trusted the sun would rise in the morning, that Tarth would still be standing long after they were gone. Not that she didn't already have a drawer for him in her home or purposefully kept the weird sugar substitute he liked for his coffee. 

Jaime leaned his head against her shoulder and exhaled softly, the tension of the day floating away. He did the same thing every night just before he drifted off to sleep, and it had become the peaceful cap to her days, a moment of quiet where her last thought was always, _he's here, and everything's fine_. She wanted to hold onto that moment with both hands, with her whole heart, and she couldn't do it if he was sleeping miles away in his own bed. 

“Hey, do you think we should...” Brienne's rushing blood was loud in her ears as she stumbled over how to even ask this. At least they were in the darkened bus stop, so he couldn't see how red she surely was. “I mean, you're over at my house all the time anyway and it doesn't make sense long-term for you to keep paying...I know you're tight on money because of what you've given to Evenstar, and it's gone pretty well with us, I think, at the hotel that--” 

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” he interrupted, lifting his head up. Brienne pressed her lips together and nodded a little, searching his face for some sign that he loved or hated the idea. She didn't get much time to look because he was kissing her, hard and eager and she felt his happy smile with her tongue. “Yes,” he said into her mouth. “Yes, of course, I was hoping--” but he never said what he was hoping for because she was too busy kissing him back.

* * *

When Brienne woke up the next morning, having collapsed into bed next to Jaime an unknown number of hours before, the sun was high and bright in the sky and her body felt like she'd run a marathon without doing a single stretch to mitigate the muscle pain, her head stuffed full of the same cotton that was drying out her mouth. 

Last night they had stopped kissing only once the bus had arrived, her lips swollen and hot with his zealous attention. The joyful buzz of his acceptance had worn off by the time the bus had dropped them at her stop, and she'd been exhausted trudging up her small road, grateful it was late enough that her father had already been in bed, although she'd spared a curious look at the unfamiliar car parked in his driveway. 

With the combination of the emotional and physical roller coaster she'd been on since she'd woken up with bile on her tongue – and even with her still empty stomach complaining loudly – Brienne hadn't taken her shoes off before she was fast asleep, Jaime tucked in next to her. 

“Ungh,” she groaned now, slapping around unseeing for her phone before finding it. It was already past eleven, and she had a text from Jaime from a couple of hours ago saying he'd woken earlier and had gone to his apartment to let her sleep undisturbed, and a voicemail from her dad asking what time he should pick her up at the dock today. 

'Don't worry, I'll get a ride back home. See you soon!' she texted her dad, smiling in anticipation of surprising him in the kitchen. 

She sent a message to Jaime next: 'Good morning.'

His response was swift. 'Afternoon you mean.'

'I was tired.'

'Glad you got some rest.' She saw the dots indicating he was typing something else and she waited. 'What's the plan for today?'

Brienne wondered if he was worried she'd changed her mind about having him there, and that was the real reason he'd left. There was little chance he had changed his, not with how enthusiastically he'd responded in that shadowy bus stop. She stretched out on her bed, covering the whole of it with her arms and legs, like she was making snow angels in the sheets. There'd be no more sleeping sprawled wherever she wanted, no more quiet mornings to herself over a cup of coffee or tea, the only sounds the ocean and her own breathing. Instead of silence, there would be snoring, or teasing, or the slide of bodies against each other. Her life had been stuffed with silence for years, overflowing with it like a too-high tide. She wanted Jaime's noise, from now until the end, whenever that was. 

'We need to go shopping. It's grocery day, and we'll need a bigger bed so you don't elbow me all night' she typed.

'You're the one with pointy elbows' he responded and then, swiftly after, a string of emoji hearts that made her giggly as a lovestruck teenager. 

'Pick me up for lunch at noon?' she asked. 

'I'll be there.'

Brienne took a quick shower, checked that she had time before Jaime's arrival, and hurried to her dad's house to say hello. When she opened the back door, the “Surprise!” died in her throat when she found her dad in the kitchen with a woman, both of them in robes that were, thankfully, still closed, but pressed up against each other in a way that suggested they wouldn't be for long. 

“Oh gods,” Brienne gasped, nearly falling backward out of the door again. “I'm sorry!” She slammed the door shut behind her as she heard equally embarrassed scrambling from inside, and she fled back to her house, her face burning. She'd forgotten about the strange car in the driveway, but it all made sense now. She covered her face with her hands, laughing and grimacing in equal measure. Her phone beeped with a message and she gingerly read the text. 

'I thought you weren't home yet' her dad had sent. 

'I was going to surprise you. Guess I surprised both of us' she typed back, adding a blushing emoji. 'I'm really sorry about that.'

'It's fine. Elenda's leaving.”

'She doesn't have to.'

'She needed to. You can come back over, say hello if you'd like.' 

She didn't want to; Brienne had met enough of her father's temporary girlfriends that she knew it probably wasn't worth the effort, but she felt like she'd driven the poor woman away with her surprise, so she sent 'sure' back and then splashed some water on her face to cool the last redness in her cheeks. 

By the time she was there both of them were dressed and Brienne shook the other woman's hand without them entirely meeting each other's eyes. She was shorter than Brienne – so average height for a woman – and wearing a knit sweater and jeans now, her dark black hair streaked with silver and pulled into a hasty braid. Her eyes were brown and approachable enough, though Brienne suspected the distance was from embarrassment. 

“A pleasure to meet you, Brienne. Your father talks of little else,” Elenda said, and she at least didn't sound annoyed. Brienne had heard similar sentiments delivered with significantly more sharpness through the years. 

“Sorry about earlier,” Brienne offered. 

“It's fine, no harm done.” Elenda laughed a little, and raised up on her tiptoes to kiss Selwyn's cheek. “I'll call you later,” she told him before giving Brienne one last tight-lipped smile and hurrying out of the house. 

“So,” Brienne said once Elenda had shut the door behind her. “Elenda, huh? How long has this been going on, young man?”

Selwyn blushed, two bright pink spots on his cheeks that made Brienne grin. “A week or so.”

“A week! Moving pretty fast for a week.” 

“She's pretty special,” he grumbled. “I was going to tell you about her when I picked you up today.”

“Mm-hm.” Brienne hopped up on the counter, her legs still nearly reaching the floor. “How'd you meet her?”

“She came to the garage. She's new to the island, from Storm's End. Widowed last year and looking for a fresh start.” 

“Well I'm happy for you, Dad.” She didn't give Elenda any better chance than any of the other women, but she hoped for her dad's sake that maybe this time it would stick. 

“Why are you back already?” he asked, leaning against the opposite counter. “I thought the team wasn't due to arrive until this afternoon.”

“They're not. I came back last night.”

“The crash?” her father asked gently. 

“Yeah, it was a rough day.”

“I'm sorry, short stuff.”

Brienne shrugged a little. “Jaime came back with me.”

“Jaime,” her father said, in a tone that had her eyes narrowing. 

“He was really sweet.”

“Was he?”

“What's going on?” she asked, frowning. “I thought you liked Jaime.” If he didn't, they were about to have a very serious argument over the news she had to share. 

“There's been a lot of disgusting rumors about you lately.”

“Dad. You can't possibly think what they're saying about Baelish-”

“No, of course not.” He folded his arms across his broad chest. “Give me some credit.” 

“Should I? You're acting very strange all of a sudden.”

Selwyn exhaled loudly. “I saw those pictures, the ones on the WSN site?”

Brienne flushed but held his gaze. “And?”

“Were you...together with Jaime? Last year?”

“For a little while.”

“Why did you keep it secret?”

She looked up at the ceiling, the water stain in the corner from a storm ten years ago that had cracked the edges of their roof off. Brienne remembered shivering in her pajamas in the middle of the night and holding the ladder for her father while he hurriedly tied a tarp over the opening, trying as best he could to lash it down against the howling wind. They and the kitchen had all ended up completely soaked. 

“It's complicated,” she sighed. 

“I could tell you fancied him, even when you were both here on Tarth. Did he make you lie about it, Brienne? Did Jaime force you to keep it private? Was he...was he ashamed of you?”

“What?” Brienne dropped her astonished gaze to her father. “No!” she said, horrified at the sudden understanding of why her father had been upset. “It was my idea, I swear. Jaime wanted to be public about it from the beginning. _I_ made him keep it quiet. Not that we did a very good job of it.” 

“Even from me? But why?”

“I was still his race engineer; I couldn't risk the media finding out about us. Look how they've been now that I'm the driver and imagine how much worse it would have been the other way around.” 

“I wouldn't have told anyone.” 

“Not on purpose,” she said, and his frown was so severe she felt a little like a child again. “There was too much at stake, it wouldn't have been fair to you or me to lay that secret at your feet. I thought we could handle it on our own. But I swear, it wasn't Jaime who insisted.” 

Selwyn tugged at his beard thoughtfully. “You'd tell me though, if he had? We don't need him for what you're doing here. He gave his money freely and the LST belongs to Evenstar. I'll protect you from him, if you need it.” 

“Dad,” she huffed, touched and annoyed in equal measure. She slid back off the counter. “I promise you, Jaime is a good man. He's never been ashamed of me, not once. Aggravated by me, all the time. But never ashamed. Sometimes his love is almost too much for me to bear.” 

“Because you're embarrassed, or because you feel unworthy of it?”

She dug her toe into an old dent in the tile and felt her father's stern gaze. 

“Brienne.” She looked up at him, and he didn't look mad at all, just concerned, and urgent, like whatever he was about to say mattered deeply. “There is no person in the world more worthy of love than you. You're not the lucky one here, _he_ is.”

“How about we both are?”

“If that means you'll accept it, then fine. I know people have not always seen you for who you truly are. But there are people who will. You never have to settle.”

“_Jaime_ sees me. He saw all of me before I even fully saw myself. You have to trust me on this one, Dad. Trust him. Has he given you cause to doubt him at all?”

“I suppose not,” her father grumbled. “And I've been waiting for it.” In one big step he was in front of her, wrapping her up in his arms. “I liked it better when you were little.” 

“No you didn't.”

“No, I didn't,” he sighed. “Jaime Lannister. I didn't see that one coming.”

She smiled against his shoulder. “Neither did I, believe me. Listen...speaking of Jaime.” She swallowed hard and extricated herself from her father's arms, feeling like she needed to face him when she dropped this news. “He, uh...I mean last night, I...”

“Hello?” Jaime's voice floated in from the back door. “Brienne, are you in here?” 

“Crap,” she muttered. “Yeah we're here.”

The door opened and Jaime stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing a simple blue button-up shirt and a pair of tan slacks, and he was smiling, and her heart jumped eagerly in her chest to see him again. “Hi,” he said softly, before turning to her father. “Good afternoon, Selwyn,” he offered much more formally. 

“Jaime,” Selwyn responded. “I owe you an apology.”

Jaime's eyebrows climbed high up his forehead. “You do?”

“I'm afraid I haven't been fair in my estimation of you,” her father said. “I hope you'll forgive me.” He held out his left hand, and Jaime took it, obviously confused. Her father shook his hand warmly, clasping his other hand to cover it. 

“Of course,” Jaime said, glancing at Brienne, and she just grinned a little, nodding encouragingly at him. “I appreciate that. I'm glad to hear you don't have a problem with us moving in together, although frankly that wouldn't have stopped us.” 

Brienne dropped her head into her hand as her dad said, “Wait, what?”

* * *

After he'd inadvertently stepped, yet again, in an unexpected pothole in Selwyn's kitchen, Jaime and Brienne had spent the rest of the afternoon grocery- and bed-shopping, and then they'd gone back to his apartment and talked about when he should officially move in with her. 

“Whenever you want, even if it's after the season's done,” he'd said, meaning it. He was well aware that she'd asked him at the end of one of the most emotional and tiring days of her life, and though she'd been just as committed to it when she'd woken – and even after they'd smoothed things over with Selwyn, who had gone through the four stages of 'my daughter is all grown up' grief: Shocked Disbelief, Overprotective Anger, Passive Aggressive 'If You're Sure,' and finally Reluctant Acceptance – Jaime hadn't wanted to pile more on Brienne if she wasn't truly ready. He'd rather wait and give her time than force his way in and have her regret it. Regret him. 

“How about tonight?” she'd replied immediately, like she hadn't had to think about it at all, and he'd kissed her down onto his own bed one last time. 

Jaime had bounced around his apartment after that, gathering up just the critical items for now, promising they'd come back for the rest after Myr, when they would have a two week break and a little more time to plan. For something so emotionally monumental, the logistics of moving in with Brienne were as simple as her re-arranging part of her closet to make space for his clothes, emptying out a shelf in the bathroom for him to store his toiletries, and him hanging his jacket up on the peg she left free. He'd toed off his shoes, turned to take her into his arms, and he was home. 

The rest of the week was a blur of activity at work with the next race only a few days away and the car needing significant repairs, but going home together at night felt as easy as if they'd been doing it for years. When they showed up together for the third morning in a row on Thursday, Addam narrowed his eyes at Jaime after Brienne left the bungalow to check in on the crew, and said, “Are you two living together now or something?”

Jaime simply grinned at his friend and Addam's eyes went wide. “Holy shit,” he said. “Jaime Lannister found someone to put up with his obnoxious ass 24/7. There's hope for me, then.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Jaime smirked, before ducking the balled-up wad of paper Addam threw at him. 

“That's a big step,” Addam noted, putting his feet up on Jaime's desk. Jaime shoved them back off. 

“Weirdly, it doesn't feel like one. It feels...right.”

Addam's eyes were warm with happiness. “When are you going to ask her to marry you?” he said, his voice teasing, but Jaime could only smile ruefully. 

“I've had a ring since January.”

The other man's mouth formed a surprised _o_. “Are you serious?”

“It's in my desk drawer right now. I've almost asked her twice already, but it's too soon and there's too much going on. I don't want to mess this up. Moving in is the best next step and at the end of the season, if she doesn't hate me, I'll ask her then.”

“Thats a _really_ big step. Obviously Brienne is an amazing person, but...are you sure about this? You've known her, what, a year?”

“Fourteen months and,” Jaime counted briefly in his head, “six days. Give or take.” 

“And of those fourteen months-”

“And six days.”

“And six days,” Addam allowed, “she's actually liked you for...?”

“A month?” Jaime said, laughing a little. 

Addam snorted. “I was convinced you'd never even have a girlfriend, let alone get married. I always thought you'd die a bachelor.” 

“So did I. But, this is it for me, Addam. _She's_ it.” Jaime lifted his shoulders, not sure he could explain how he knew. “When I was in the hospital in Harrenhal,” he said, trying, “I had a window that looked out on the lake there, so I could track the days. But the sun rose when she came, and it set when she left, no matter what time it was. Wouldn't you want to marry the sun, if you could?” 

Addam nodded, his lips curved, a small, happy bow. “You make a solid argument.” 

“I just hope I can make it to her, when the time comes.” He sighed, pressing his hand flat on the desk. “There's a very real chance living together will ruin any goodwill I've earned over the last fourteen months.”

“And six days.”

Jaime chuckled half-heartedly. “She could just as easily decide I'm not worth the trouble.” 

“You honestly think Brienne would say no if you asked her?”

“I think it's even odds right now. I like a risk, but...” Jaime shook his head. 

“I wish you two could see yourselves from this side, because if you could we wouldn't even be having this conversation. She would give up everything for you, tonight, if you asked her to.” 

“I would never ask her that.” 

“That's exactly why she would do it. You don't have to make any life-altering decisions now, but when the time comes, I'd bet it all on you two.” 

“Well, I've got awhile to figure out how to do it; this isn't the time.” 

“You really have changed, haven't you? Being patient, putting some thought into big decisions. Maybe I should go see this therapist of yours.” 

“I thought you'd already achieved greatness?”

“Clearly,” Addam said, lofty, “but there's still perfection.” 

Jaime threw the paper ball back using his prosthetic hand, hitting Addam square in the chest.


	33. March (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne woke up the Sunday morning of her second race ever with one giant butterfly churning up all of her insides, but she didn't throw up. Instead she rolled onto her back and tried to mimic Jaime breathing calm and deep next to her. She kept inhaling too fast, though, and when she tried to slow her exhalations they came out stuttering and loud. 
> 
> Free practice had been a tentative re-introduction to the track after her crash back in Sunspear, and she still hadn't been quite ready for qualifying, for the recklessness it required of her. Though none of the team had said anything, she'd felt heavy with disappointment all night at her p-17 start for today; heavier still knowing she'd have to get back in the car and onto the track. What if she crashed again? What if Ramsay was right and she really didn't finish a single race this season? 
> 
> Her chest tightened as she imagined retiring race after race after race, the media's questions turning entirely to insults, and even the few cheers in the stands fading away. What if those girls hated her for letting them down?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you following real F1: the Australian GP has been cancelled due to COViD-19. Shaping up to be an unusual year. I can assure you there will be no pandemics in HFoG.

**Lannister Corp Racing: 10 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 0 pts**

Myr had not changed nearly as much as Jaime had when they flew in Thursday night. They had splurged to fly the car over in a cargo plane to save time, the Hound and Bronn and some of the mechanics going with it, but Jaime, Brienne, and the rest were stuffed into economy seats on a commercial propellor jet that smelled like it had been left open to the rain. 

When Jaime had stood up for the tenth time in an hour, Brienne had leaned over from her aisle seat across from him and frowned. “What's wrong?”

“My legs are jammed up into my chest. How do you sit in these seats?”

“You just do.” She hadn't looked any more comfortable than he was, just more forbearing. 

“Next time, we're flying first class,” he muttered, sitting back down again. 

“We can't afford that. Just suck it up like the rest of us, will you?” 

Jaime had yanked the in-flight magazine out of the back of the pocket and flipped through that for two minutes before he'd gotten bored again. “Do we not even get food service?”

“Myr isn't that far from Tarth, they don't serve food on this flight. Have you ever flown economy before?” When Jaime had just given her a baleful stare, she'd shaken her head. “Sometimes I forget how rich you were.” 

“I like to be comfortable. You know how hard that is when you're tall,” he'd said defensively and she'd at least looked fondly at him instead of just annoyed. “Hey,” he'd added, leaning across the aisle and lowering his voice. “I've also never made out in the economy bathrooms before, if you want to try that.” 

“We'd never fit,” she'd said, which wasn't exactly a no. “You barely fit.” 

Jaime had lifted an eyebrow. “Just like my-” 

She'd shoved him back to his seat, but her cheeks were red and she'd smiled down at her book even though it was a dry history of the early years of Formula One. 

When they landed in Myr, the biggest difference from the year before was that there were no crowds or ambassadors to greet them. Instead there was just the bus they'd rented and a rail-thin, bald man that looked like a matchstick with his sunburned scalp, who barely helped them load their luggage before trundling them off to the mid-level hotel they were staying at. 

“I never thought I'd be grateful for the Hound's customer service skills,” Jaime grumbled when they arrived and the bus driver didn't even get out to help them unload. The crew did it for him, uncomplaining as they made a sort of bucket brigade of luggage, Jaime in the middle of it, Brienne sorting and directing at the end. She'd grown into leadership with an easy confidence that thrilled him to see. Garlan was next to her, watching like she was a field commander and he was a half-second away from saluting. If his eyes had been shining any brighter he could have lit the whole area. 

As they stood at the end of the hotel check-in line later, Brienne leaning her head on Jaime's shoulder, her arm snug around his waist, Jaime said quietly, “That Tyrell boy has a mighty crush on you.”

Her head rubbed against him as she shook it. “He does not.”

“He absolutely does and I don't blame him one bit.” 

“Stop it,” she said.

“It's a good thing you don't use your powers for evil,” he went on cheerfully, and when Tion Frey, just ahead of them in line, glanced back curiously at them, Jaime beamed at his cousin. Genna's boy was a hard worker but fairly clueless, and Jaime had made it a point to keep an eye on him. 

“My mom wants you to call her,” Tion said, pricking Jaime's good mood. 

“So she keeps telling everyone around me.” 

“Why don't you? I thought you two got along?”

“Lannister family politics are complicated, surely you're old enough to have realized that.” 

Tion frowned. “But it's not politics. She just wants to talk to you.” 

Jaime could feel Brienne watching him with patient, curious eyes. “Does she? Because when I was in the hospital she texted me once and sent flowers. I had nothing but time, why didn't she talk to me then?” 

“I don't know,” Tion said, stumbling over his embarrassment. He hadn't contacted Jaime either. “Maybe she wanted to give you space. Or she wasn't sure what to say. You could call her now.” 

The front desk manager had stepped up to help check people in and Jaime waved Tion over to him, eager to be done with this conversation. He knew what Genna would want to talk about, but he had no idea which way she would throw her loyalties. She'd been kind enough to him and his siblings when his mother had died, and her falling out with his father was legendary in family lore, but Genna Lannister's soft, golden outer shell could not hide the solid steel Lannister spine inside, and it was anyone's guess whether she'd be more ferociously protective of the family name or her actual family, and Jaime was too afraid to find out which just yet. He didn't have enough family he liked left to lose another one, especially one that might be able to make him feel guilty about it. 

Shireen had assured them that she'd found another hotel where the manager would protect them from the nosy media and a prying Tywin Lannister, but Jaime had a hushed conversation with the man again while Brienne and the others got their keys and figured out who was where. 

“Your employees can't be sharing details either,” he finished, and the manager nodded. 

“Of course, Mr. Lannister. We pride ourselves on discretion.”

“We'll see,” Jaime said, then he'd slipped a hundred dragons into the man's hand as he shook it. “For your help.” 

The good thing about staying at less expensive hotels, Jaime supposed, was that it took a less significant tip to genuinely impress someone, and the manager looked pleased as he pocketed the money. “You have my assurances, Mr. Lannister. We're happy to have you here.”

Jaime smiled, tight-lipped, and followed Brienne up to their room. The man didn't have the same determined conviction of Alyse Ladybright, but it wasn't like they had much choice. They needed a relatively inexpensive place to stay that was near the track and had enough rooms for the whole crew, and the Dragonroad Inn fit the bill. 

The next morning as they grabbed their meagre continental breakfast, Jaime noticed that there were no media inside, although he felt a curious stare from one or two of their fellow patrons – likely fans in for the race – which was confirmed when two men came over to his and Brienne's table and stammered and blushed their way through an introduction. 

“We'd really like an autograph,” the slightly less tongue-tied one managed to say, holding a blank piece of hotel-provided notepaper out to Jaime. 

“My autograph?” he asked, startled. 

“Both of you, if we could.” He looked hopefully between them and Brienne took the paper and the hotel pen that he offered, and carefully signed her name and racing number. She pushed it across the small table to Jaime. 

He had spent time in physical therapy working on his prosthetic's grip until he could get it, but the movements still felt stilted and clunky, like a robot signing his name instead of himself. When the fan went to reach for the paper with a wide smile, Jaime almost yanked it back and crumpled it up, but he wasn't quick enough and the paper was whisked away, reverently held against the man's chest. 

“Thank you so much for being cool about this,” he said, nudging his companion with an elbow. “We weren't sure if we'd be disrupting your breakfast.”

“You are,” Jaime said, and Brienne gently kicked his shin under their table. 

“But it's fine,” she added quickly. “We're always happy to meet fans.” 

When they'd left he lifted an eyebrow in disbelief. “I thought you didn't like to lie to people.”

“I wasn't lying,” she said, her brows furrowing at him in a way that made him want to kiss them smooth. “I do like meeting my fans.”

“I don't think you saw the fan pictures from Sunspear.”

“I did.” She sighed, unwrapping her last muffin. “I don't like taking pictures, but I like meeting people, even if it's still weird that they're there to see me,” she admitted. Sometimes he forgot this was her first season compared to his twentieth. 

“You'll get sick of it,” he assured her, and she just frowned at him as she ate her muffin. 

When they arrived for free practice, their garage again at the end of the line – and again surrounded by more than their share of media – Jaime took a few steadying breaths and held Brienne's hand with his prosthetic one as they faced the cameras. 

“Ms. Tarth,” one of the nearby local sportscasters said, waving his arm. “How are you feeling? It's a short week after your crash.” 

“I'm physically and mentally prepared for this weekend.” 

“How's your car?”

“As though she was fresh from the garage. Bronn and his team are miracle workers.” 

They were, too. There'd been an extra wing and F1 cars were designed to leave scraps of themselves behind like confetti, so they were prepared for the bodywork, too. But it had eaten up all of the team's attention that week and with another race only a week later, everyone was pushed to the edge. It didn't seem to matter, Jaime thought as he watched the crew in the garage, as diligent as ever. Their youth and eagerness to prove themselves – their belief in Brienne and what she was doing – were enough to keep them going like they hadn't all put in twelve-to-fifteen hour days this week. 

Brienne nodded at a young woman next, who held out her microphone. “What changes have you made to avoid a repeat of last week?”

“Lots of practice on the virtual trainer with pulling out of the pit stop lane, and also I'll do my best not to throw up ahead of time.” There was scattered, understanding laughter; her bit from the pre-Sunspear scrum had been popular with fans all week. 

They fielded another handful of mostly respectful questions between them, and though Melisandre hovered in the middle of the throng, she didn't raise her hand once, or even look like she wanted to. By the time they'd finished and the crowd started to disperse, Jaime half-expected to find it was just a cardboard cutout of the woman, instead of the flesh and blood body. But she flowed in to fill the space that the departing reporters left and said in her deceptively melodious voice: “Jaime, can I have a minute? Just you is fine. I'm sure Brienne doesn't want to talk to me.” 

“What makes you think I want to?”

“I've come to claim my exclusive ten minutes, assuming you'll honor what you said last week.” 

He and Brienne exchanged a look. “I'll stay,” she said flatly. 

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest when he faced Melisandre. “What did you find out?”

“Tywin Lannister started those rumors. Kevan was the first person to be overheard loudly speculating about it in the garage that morning and it filtered out from there. Your uncle is not subtle, and he's not as smart as he thinks he is. I got from him that he wasn't the original source.” Her smooth face wrinkled a little in consternation. “You don't seem surprised.” 

“We assumed. I just needed confirmation. But why?”

“You didn't ask for why, and I'm sure you know better than I do. You have more reason to hate them than the reverse, but even though Lannister Corp gave you their LST bonus, Tywin sent me those pictures to publish and then follows with something like this. I'm not an idiot, Jaime. I know a story when I see one.” 

“There's no story. Unless the story is my father just hates competition.” 

Melisandre's darkly-made up lips pursed. “I want my ten minutes, Jaime.” 

He suspected he knew what she would want to talk about. “Fine. We can give you ten after free practice is over today. What do you want it to be about?”

Her eyes flickered to Brienne. “I'd like a follow-up with Brienne and Arya about females in the sport. I heard you've formed a bit of a club with some of the other women in the garages and I want to know more about that.”

Brienne's mouth dropped in genuine shock. “Why?”

Melisandre hesitated, a fraction of a second, but Jaime could see something complicated shift in her eyes. “Because there are only limited ratings in prurient gossip, it turns out. The photograph story did well for a few days and then died on the vine. You played it smart by not responding. But we still get hits to the video of your previous interview, and WSN are still the only ones you've done that type of interview with and we'd like to make a monopoly of it. And I know even if I forced Jaime up there for ten minutes to talk about whatever's happening between your two teams, I'd get nothing. I will find out,” she promised, “but it will have to be another way. I might as well use the opportunity for something more valuable in the meantime.” 

“I won't tell you either.”

“I won't ask.” Jaime didn't entirely believe her, but there was a sincerity to her voice that he wasn't sure he'd heard before. “I just want to know more about how it's been for you. I've been doing this a long time, Brienne. You're a sea change.” 

“I haven't even finished a race yet.”

“You will.” 

Brienne licked her lips and nodded. “All right, I'll do it. But after the race.” 

“Even if you don't finish again?”

“Yes. Monday morning, before we fly home. You can have ten minutes in the garage while they pack up.” 

Melisandre smiled brightly. “Wonderful. I'll see you at the interview table later.”

They watched her stride off, head held high, her boots clacking on the concrete. 

“Do you trust her?” Brienne asked. 

“No. But it felt like an apology.” 

“I thought so, too. It's only ten minutes, and I'll have Arya with me.” 

He rubbed her back warmly. “You're getting better at this all the time, you'd be fine on your own.”

“It'll still be better with Arya. Melisandre makes me nervous. Especially now. I don't know what she wants.” 

“She wants a story,” Jaime mused. Brienne's muscles were slowly relaxing under his hand, and he slid up to her neck, dug his fingers in and elicited a soft sigh that put all thoughts of Melisandre out of his mind. How he could want Brienne this much, all the time, still sometimes surprised him, but her head was drooped forward to give him space to work, her eyes shut, her lips slightly open in pleasure, and all he could think was how much he wished they weren't here right now. Jaime slid his hand down and off her back and grinned ruefully when she looked up at him. “We've got work,” he explained and she glanced downward to see he was already starting to have a problem. 

She flushed. “You know last year Tyrion asked me at the dinner if I had a Myrish hunk waiting for me,” she said, and the arch flirtiness of her tone almost did him in right there. 

“You still don't,” he said, “but you do have a Westerosi one.” 

Brienne's lips went thin and white as she tried to hide her amusement, but she couldn't hide the way her eyes were sparkling, sunlight on the sea. “I'm glad to see your ego hasn't been punctured at all.”

“It has, I just had a surplus.” She looked like she wanted to throw herself at him and he braced for it, hoping she would. 

“I wish I hadn't said that thing about the driver room last week,” she muttered, but she shoved her hair back behind her ears and nodded resolutely at him, and he at her. 

“It's a shame,” he agreed, “especially since there's not much else for us to do right now.” 

They kept up their very determined faces for another few seconds before bursting into simultaneous silly smiles. “Oh fuck it,” Brienne said, grabbing his hand and dragging him to the back through their hustling crew.

* * *

Brienne woke up the Sunday morning of her second race ever with one giant butterfly churning up all of her insides, but she didn't throw up. Instead she rolled onto her back and tried to mimic Jaime breathing calm and deep next to her. She kept inhaling too fast, though, and when she tried to slow her exhalations they came out stuttering and loud. 

Free practice had been a tentative re-introduction to the track after her crash back in Sunspear, and she still hadn't been quite ready for qualifying, for the recklessness it required of her. Though none of the team had said anything, she'd felt heavy with disappointment all night at her p-17 start for today; heavier still knowing she'd have to get back in the car and onto the track. What if she crashed again? What if Ramsay was right and she really didn't finish a single race this season? 

Her chest tightened as she imagined retiring race after race after race, the media's questions turning entirely to insults, and even the few cheers in the stands fading away. What if those girls hated her for letting them down? 

Jaime shifted a little, the white sheet sliding to show more of the long valley down the middle of his back, and she gratefully let the sight of him distract her from what was verging on the edge of a panic attack. _Details_, she thought, remembering what she'd learned helping him. _Focus on the details._ His eyes were still closed, his face slack with sleep. Brienne turned onto her side and watched him, before running her fingers over the hard bump of his shoulder blades, first one and then the other. His mouth, pink and soft, twitched and curved into a small smile but his eyes stayed closed. She hesitated sometimes to look at him too closely, afraid that if she let herself admire too much the firm line of his jaw under the closely cropped beard, the tapering of his wrist that flared back into his strong hand, the taut hills of his calves, that she'd talk herself out of believing he could love her. Jaime was blessed with perfect genetics and a sharp-edged charm, all topped off with an offensively romantic heart; occasionally, the fact that he'd chosen to devote that heart, wield that charm, and share that body with her struck her as truly absurd. Especially around beauties like Serala Darklyn, who'd stopped by to visit them during free practice on Friday. Brienne had been tongue-tied and nervous around the other woman, and Serala had been incredibly sweet and patient with Brienne's stumbling attempts to wish her well on her new acting career. 

“The three of us should talk sometime,” Serala had said, laughing gaily. “We've all done some career shifting, haven't we?” 

Jaime had been polite and charming with Serala, stepping in smoothly to cover Brienne's awkwardness. And though he'd given Brienne no reason to think he felt any regret, to believe he was imagining any sort of might-have-been, she wondered if he ever saw a more petite, beautiful woman in his dreams. Here, when he was quiet and still – when she couldn't see his heart in his eyes – the small, mean voice of her past made itself heard, a poisonous hiss she couldn't drown out on her own. Jaime's love was so much louder the voice could only exist here in the silence. 

His lashes twitched as she rubbed her hand lightly down his back, and then they opened and he went from hazy dreaminess to focused in a moment. There was no disappointment at seeing her broad, plain face on the pillow next to his. If anything it was the opposite: there were the familiar crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiled, the painter's swirl of green and gold in his irises going liquid with heat, and his fingers came up, brushing lightly at the hair at her temple. 

“Good morning,” he murmured, a deep, contented rumble.

“Good morning,” she said bashfully. He looked at her this way most mornings and it would probably always feel too much, even when they were both old and gray. _If_ they grew old together. They were only months into this relationship, had been living together for just a couple of weeks and that only if she counted their time in hotels. To think of forever so soon felt greedy. 

“Are you ready for this?” he asked, the familiar cadence settling her a little more. 

“I think so.” 

“No throwing up?”

“Not yet.” 

His smile turned sly as his fingers traveled down her neck to trace along her collarbones. Brienne shivered. “Do you need a distraction?” 

“After I go to the bathroom.” 

Jaime's eyes lit with amusement and then he pressed his hand on her chest, holding her down as he got up. “Me first,” he laughed, tumbling out of the bed. 

After they'd both returned to the bed, she pulled aside the covers and knelt next to him. He was still smiling, lying on his back with his head pillowed on his right arm, a man too improbably handsome to be with her, but here all the same and hers to enjoy. He was naked now, too, and already hard and she slid down his body to take him in her mouth, savoring the hiss of pleasure when she did. A year ago she might have been embarrassed about how much she loved doing this, but now she reveled in how utterly it made him fall apart, the way just her tongue on his cock had him pressing his broad shoulders into the mattress, made his thighs tighten under her hands. 

“Shouldn't I, ah-” he gasped as she sucked him in a little more, “shouldn't I be helping you instead?” His hips rolled under her, eager but not forcing. Brienne swallowed him down further and he jerked, his fingers clenching on her shoulder. She was hungry for him; she wanted as much as she could take. She bobbed her head up and down and tasted salt and the tangy slide of his pre-cum and Jaime was tense all over, trying and failing to hold himself still. Brienne gently touched her teeth to his skin and he groaned so loudly it was a shock. 

“Not too much more,” he panted, his voice rough as shredded tires. “I was really hoping to fuck you into this not-very-soft bed.” 

Brienne throbbed, already wet. She let his length slip from her mouth and kissed the head and when she looked up at him, past his heaving chest to his face as twisted with desperate want as she'd ever seen, the little, mean voice told her it couldn't be true. 

“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered over it and he swallowed hard. “I want you to...to talk to me when you do.” He usually talked at least a little – Jaime was incapable of being completely quiet, it seemed – but she needed the waterfall of his voice to drown out all the worry about both the upcoming day and the days of her past. Jaime nodded fiercely and he moved with the quick, latent reflexes of his driving history, having her under him in a flurry of hastily shoved-aside sheets. “I wasn't done,” she managed on a startled laugh. 

“I couldn't wait,” he said, and he thrust into her smooth and fast and demanding and she cried out and wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Besides, I wanted to hear you make that sound and you can't do that with my cock in your mouth.” 

Her cunt clenched hard around him and he tugged her ear with sharp teeth. “I'll talk,” he breathed into her ear, “but I want to hear you, too.” 

“I-I'll try.” 

“I'll make it impossible to fail,” he promised, and then he leaned back so he was on his knees, lifting her hips up to settle them higher, her legs falling wide and leaving her open to his eyes and hands and cock. “Ah,” he breathed as though mesmerized. He'd pulled out of her to reposition their bodies and he gripped himself and dragged the head between her folds, nudging gently but not entering. “Yes,” he exhaled, “so slick and ready for me.” She hadn't realized asking him to use his mouth for something other than pleasuring her would slow him down this much, and she thrust her hips up towards him in a silent plea. He lifted his brows and faked a look of surprise. “So anxious to continue, Wrench? Afraid I'll let you miss the start of the race?” He rubbed around and over her clit. “You only have to be there for weigh-in,” he said. “I could keep you here until then and no one could do a thing about it. Maybe I will; I'm sure I packed a tie or two that could keep those powerful arms in place.” 

Brienne tilted her head back and moaned, already so close with just the pressure of his cock against her, his voice like another warm hand on her body, that the image of him tying tender knots around her wrists overwhelmed her. 

“You like that,” he murmured as though he'd made an important scientific discovery. He was back at the wet heat of her core again, teasing and slow as he thrust the tiniest amount in, and then a little more. “Not today though. Today you want me to talk to you, and I am but your obedient servant.” 

“If that were true,” she panted, canting her hips against his hand and stump pressing on her inner thighs, failing to pull him deeper no matter how badly she wanted it, “you'd be going faster than this.” 

“Perhaps 'obedient' was the wrong choice of word,” he allowed and she groaned into her arm thrown above her head. 

“I _can_ be obedient,” he said, and he drove all the way in and the noise that it pushed out of her was unearthly with relief. When he slid all the way back out again she whimpered. 

“Gods,” he said, ragged, and hearing him only made her own need worse. “I want to fuck you too much, Brienne. I have to go slowly or I'll make a fool of myself.” 

“You could never.”

“Over you? I could every day. I'm just too prideful to let myself.” He thrust long and slow a few times, stopped when their bodies were pressed together and she could feel him pulsing inside her. “You're so wet.” Back out, and she could hear the slurp of herself as she unwillingly let him go. “And strong.” In again, urgent and deep and she let out a short, sharp cry. “You're strong all over, Brienne. Your legs, your back – fuck, I could come just looking at your back sometimes. I've pictured it, watching you do your stretches and exercises, thinking about jerking myself off in the middle of the gym while you do pull-ups.” She didn't know how his voice was so steady again when he was driving into her in a rhythm now, like every stroke was just a frame to the images he wove around her. “I've thought about fucking you there, too, on the weight bench. I'd lie back and you'd straddle me.” His voice cracked a little at that but his hand just went tighter around her hip, deliciously bruising, and she couldn't speak to tease him even if her brain could have formed a thought beyond _yes_ or _more_ or _harder, fuck me harder_. “Or bending you over your car and taking you in the garage where everyone can hear.” His hand moved from her hip to her clit and she arched up at the first feel of his fingers against her, a high, keening sound erupting from her throat. “Fuck,” he grunted, moving faster, pounding into her. “I've thought of a million ways and they're never as good as you really are, as hot or as wet or as fucking sweet.” 

Brienne shut her eyes and let Jaime's words wash over her, let his body, too, as he curved down to tuck his arms under her torso and meld them tightly together, sweat-slick chests frantic against each other, his chest hair rough and nearly unbearable against her sensitive nipples as he fucked her desperately. 

“Are you close?” he growled into her neck. “I want you to come so hard around me you'll feel it all day.” 

“Please, gods, yes,” she begged, clawing her hands down his back until her nails were dug into his ass. 

“What do you want?” he asked hoarsely.

“You,” she pleaded. “Tell me. _Please_.” 

“I love you,” he gasped. “I want only you. I'll never stop.”

_”Jaime.”_

“_Fuck_, Brienne, you've got to-- I can't--” 

Light sparked behind her eyes in time with the urgent clench of her walls around his cock, thick and solid and hot inside her, and he shifted a little to go deeper, to claim the last bit of her he could. Her orgasm hit her forceful and unforgiving as the track wall and she let herself scream it out as he thumbed her nipple, sucked at the flesh of her neck and rutted into her until she couldn't breathe and she couldn't move and he was joining her, swelling and releasing inside her as he thrust in fierce, deep jerks. 

She sank back into the bed with Jaime collapsed on top of her, heavy and breathing so loud in her ear she winced and turned her head even though she felt like none of her muscles should be working. 

They lay there for awhile, panting hard, Brienne floating unthinking until Jaime groaned and shifted enough off of her that she felt herself snap back to her body. The little voice was silent. 

“Well, fuck,” she murmured and he laughed a little against her shoulder. 

“I was thinking the same thing.” 

“That's one way to get rid of pre-race nerves.” She felt so loose she might just slide right off the bed; was certain she wouldn't be able to walk anywhere for a few minutes at least. 

“Anytime,” he said in a sleepy, sated voice that flowed like syrup over her. 

“We have to get up.”

“Nuh-uh.”

She snickered. “Yes, I have a race today, remember? And you have to help me.” 

He groaned into the pillow. “Fine. I'll sleep while you shower.” 

“You shower first, I need to just rest my eyes for a minute.” 

“It's not your eyes that should be tired.” 

“Okay I need to rest my whole body.” 

He lifted his head enough to smile smugly at her. “I was good, wasn't I?”

She hit him in the face with her pillow. “Just for that, you definitely have to shower first.”

* * *

The post-sex buzz got her through breakfast, the bus ride, even the barely controlled chaos of the paddock and pit lane as crews and media and VIP guests rushed around preparing for race day. She was tapped on the shoulder twice and asked for a selfie and she even managed to smile a little for both of them. 

But it started to evaporate as lights out drew nearer. The track walk that normally focused her only reminded her of every place she could make a wrong move and go careening into the wall; and when they started up her car for initial readouts, she remembered the stench of burnt oil from last week, and how Galladon's truck had once smelled the same. Brienne clenched a nearby workbench to ground herself. 

Addam, walking by, smiled encouragingly at her, but his eyes were concerned. 

“Feeling well?” he asked, pausing. 

“Well enough,” Brienne managed. 

“Jaime let you sleep in a little this morning, I hope?”

She felt her blush like a flame on her cheeks and Addam snorted. “Well, that works, too,” he said wryly. “Can I get you anything?”

Brienne forced herself to let go of the workbench and shook her head. “No, I'm fine.” 

“Why don't you go relax for a few minutes in your room? You've got some time before parade.” He gently took her elbow like she was some delicate lady of old and she frowned down at his hand but let him lead her back to the space. “You're sure I can't get you anything?” 

“I'm _fine_,” she said, and it sounded snippier than she intended so she modulated her tone and tried again: “Just a little nerves. I'll be fine, thanks.” 

Addam left and Brienne looked around her driver room. Someone had put up a photo of her and Serala, signed by the actress. Brienne grimaced at how big and unkempt she looked next to the petite woman, but the message was sweet: _You're **my** favorite star! We're rooting for you! Love, Serala_. It joined the photo of her dad and Gal, as well as the one she'd had printed last week of her favorite image from the photo shoot she and Jaime had done with Pia. That one was in a soft black and white and in it Brienne was facing the camera, but her head was tilted down, and it was hard to see much of her features except to tell that she was smiling joyfully. Nothing could obscure the way her cheeks were pulled wide and high with the size of her happiness. Jaime stood perpendicular to her, his chest pressing against her arm, his nose nearly touching her ear; his eyes and features were open and focused entirely on Brienne. His long fingers lingered gently on the opposite side of her jaw, guiding her cheek towards him. The picture had been taken from the shoulders up; Jaime had been shirtless by this time in the shoot and Pia had put Brienne in a tube top and the intimacy of it seemed almost indecent. What shook her the first time Pia had showed it to her and every time since was the look on his face: he was a man in the grips of a profound and breathtaking love, and he was looking at _her_. 

It had overwhelmed her – everything on his face and the depth of what people could see just in the small part of hers. Pia had wanted to make it the cover photo of the story but Brienne hadn't let her, couldn't imagine the world getting to have this moment. Instead she suggested that Pia use the shots from just afterward, when Jaime had kissed her on the cheek. This moment said too much, and she didn't want to share it. Pia had relented and Brienne had asked her to print out a good quality version last week to have with her here. 

Pia had handed it over almost reluctantly. “You're _sure_ we can't post this somewhere?” she'd asked one more time. 

“No,” Brienne had said softly. “Not this one.” 

Brienne touched the photo now, but even that couldn't settle the anxious jangling of her nerves as they gained momentum inside her. 

There was a knock on her door, polite and unobtrusive. “Come in,” she said. 

Bronn entered, carrying a muffin. He held it out to her. 

“What is that?” she asked. 

“What's it look like?”

“Why are you bringing me a muffin?”

“I thought you might be hungry. You don't have to eat it if you don't want to,” he said gruffly. He set the muffin down on the nearby table. “Can I get something else for you? They had poppyseed, you want one of those instead?”

“No,” she said, perplexed and a little annoyed again. 

“A bearclaw then? A bagel?”

“_No_,” she insisted. “Stop...offering me things.”

There was another knock on the door and Bronn opened it to let Jaime in. Jaime had a banana, which he held out to her. “Hungry?”

“Warrior save me, I don't want any food!” The two men exchanged a look and that just made her angrier. “Quit that.”

“It's just food, not a personal attack.” 

“Everyone's treating me like a child. I don't need a juicebox and a nap.” 

Bronn lifted his brows and made for the door. “I've got mechanic stuff to do,” he said, slipping out as quickly as he could. 

“Coward,” Jaime muttered. 

“Maybe you should go with him, I'm sure you've got a blanket and a pacifier to scrounge up.” 

Jaime's mouth went thin and sharp, a warning gleam lighting his eyes. He was being patient, but she wanted to poke at him until he snapped back. “It's time for drivers' parade.” 

“Great,” she bit off, moving around him to leave the room, but he shifted to stand between her and the door, not touching her, just using his solid presence to get her to pause. 

“I know you're nervous about the race,” he started, his tone too gentle, and she pushed past him and out, unsurprised when he followed her down the hallway. She was fairly surprised when he hurried past her to stop in her path. “Where are you going?” he demanded. 

“You said it was parade time. I'm just doing as you tell me.”

“You're starting to sound like me, which, incredibly, I don't mean as a compliment. We're trying to help you, Brienne.”

She saw Willem start down the hallway towards them and she glared at him until he turned the other way and left them alone again. “Then treat me like a driver, not whatever this is.” 

“What do you want? For me to yell at you for worrying too much? To tell you to shape up because we can't have a repeat of last week?”

“Yes!”

“I won't.” 

She clenched her hands in frustration. “Why not?”

“Because you just want a fight and I don't want to fight with you before you get into a car you could die in!”

Brienne's head jerked back, like the g-force of his own worry had slammed straight into her. “Jaime. I didn't know.” 

“It's not your job to know,” he muttered. “I shouldn't have even said it. You're the center of the circle. We're all here to take care of _you_.” That sounded like something Addam or Dr. Tarly had told him. 

“That's not fair to you.” 

Jaime grimaced at the banana he'd accidentally smushed in his prosthetic hand. “It doesn't have to be fair, it's the way it is.” 

Brienne chewed her bottom lip, the flesh sticking between her teeth. “I don't need you to be mean, but I can't take all of you treating me with kid gloves before a race. It makes me feel weak.” 

He sighed heavily. “All right. But I won't make the same promise for after.” 

“I don't want you to.” Tentatively, she touched his shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

Jaime ran his hand through his hair, tugged at the headset around his neck. “Let me hover with worry, just a little. I'll pour the rest out to Addam and Bronn.” 

“All right. Do we have a minute before the parade? Because I really could use my race engineer right now.” 

Jaime nodded, and when Willem poked his head cautiously back at the end of the hall, Jaime gestured for Brienne to walk with him towards the garage. “What do you need, Wrench?”

“I need to get my hands to stop shaking.” She held them out so they could both see the small tremor of nerves. 

“You can't be afraid. You ran well last week because you were fearless, you weren't thinking about everything that could happen. You were slow this week because your brain got in the way.” 

“Like air hockey?” she said, and he looked confused for a second before she saw the memory flash through his eyes and he laughed. 

“Exactly like air hockey.”

“I don't know how to shut off my brain. I keep thinking of how quickly it all went wrong.” 

“You're driving two hundred miles an hour. Everything happens fast. You've got to just let yourself drive.”

“But _how_?” she asked. He was always so certain, like it was something she would just get. “I'm not like you.” 

Jaime's step hesitated for a moment, and he looked her over, considering her. “You're not,” he said. “Which is something I should have realized sooner. Every driver has their methods, their triggers to get into race mode. We usually discover them as we come up through the different levels, but you haven't had that luxury.”

“What was yours?”

“Spite, mostly,” he said, laughing a little at himself. “I'd think of all the people who hated me and how great it would feel to wipe that smug look off of their faces. There are healthier methods. The Dothrak team does yoga right before a race. Oberyn, if you can believe it, meditates. Robb listens to some song he won't share with anyone else. We just have to find your thing. When do you feel most in touch with your body and least controlled by your thoughts?” he asked, curious, and she thought immediately of that morning, and flushed so red he broke into a wide grin. 

“Shut up,” she muttered. 

“If I can be of service-”

“Shut _up_.” Brienne grabbed her water bottle and gulped it down with Jaime's gently laughing eyes on her. “I'll figure something out,” she went on when she’d sufficiently distracted herself. “What can I do today? Serious answers only,” she added before he could suggest something entirely inappropriate. 

“I've got just the thing. Go to parade and weigh-in and I'll have it ready for you when you get back. You can trust me,” he promised at her reluctant stare, and she did.

* * *

The drivers' parade was much the same as the first time: Brienne alone in her car, the rising and falling waves of the crowd noise as she passed. The boos were a little louder, but so were the cheers, and by the time she was at the door for weigh-in, she didn't feel any worse than last week. Jon was waiting for her by the door, too, and he just nodded silently at her and led her inside. He was shorter than her, and even more serious, and though there were some barely hushed whispers and sniggering from Connington and Euron's corner, they left Brienne in peace. As soon as she'd finished and was heading for the door, Jon gave another nod in response to her thanks before peeling away for the Direwolf garage. 

It was little wonder Robb did the vast majority of the media for that team. 

Bronn had come to walk with her back to the Evenstar garage and he was quiet as they passed the first few teams, until finally he said, looking straight ahead and not at her at all: “I'm sorry about the muffin.”

“I'm sorry I snapped at you about it.” 

“Then we're square.” And that was it. 

Jaime was waiting for her when they got back, rolling forward onto his toes and back onto his heels, eager and impatient. Brienne couldn't contain the smile when she saw him, and didn't fail to notice Addam's long-suffering eyeroll from his side. 

“I've got your pre-race activity all set up,” Jaime said as soon as they were near. “Come on.” 

He led her to the paddock, where in the doorway of an empty conference room someone had screwed a metal bar near the top of the door frame. Brienne blinked at it, unsure. 

“It's a pull-up bar,” he explained. “When you're at the gym, you get into such a zone doing pull-ups.” She remembered him that morning talking about how aroused that made him, and she couldn't quite meet his eyes. “Do twenty while we finish getting the car set up. I know this isn't tall enough for you, but it's something, right?”

Brienne glanced around, saw that for the moment there were no media within easy reach of them, and she bent to kiss him with slightly open lips and a brief press of her tongue. He sighed into her mouth and when she broke the kiss his head leaned forward a little for more. 

“Pull-ups,” she breathed. 

“I'm still willing to help if you'd like to try other things.” 

“Maybe another time,” she said. “Go get my car ready. I'll be there in a couple of minutes.” 

“I could stay here, help you keep count.” 

“Jaime.” 

“I have a calculator-like mind. Here, I'll show you.” He kissed her cheek and whispered, “one.” Then kissed her jaw. “Two.” Her chin. “Three.” The corner of her mouth. “Four.” 

She put her hand on his chest and nudged him ever-so-gently away. “Pull-ups,” she said, though she was getting less convincing every time she said it. “You can finish counting tonight.” 

“Deal. I can count _very_ high. I doubt you'll last to a hundred, though.” He winked at her and left her there, wondering how far down her body one hundred would take him. 

_Pull-ups_, she reminded herself. She wasn't sure if Jaime's brief physical onslaught had been intended to also help distract and relax her, but it had worked. Brienne went through twenty pull-ups with relative ease, did five more until she felt her arms burning a little, and then stopped, not wanting to use up all her strength before the race. She felt looser; more focused on the feel of her own muscles shifting under her skin and not on the worry and responsibility nipping at her heels. Tugging her suit back up and on, Brienne returned to the garage just in time to get the car out on the grid for final checks. 

P-17 was shockingly far back from the lights with nearly the entire field arrayed in front of her. It would be a miracle if she even made it up to tenth, but the only miracle she needed today was to finish. 

Just before the lights started turning on, Jaime was quiet and confident in her ear telling her she could do it and Brienne nearly believed him. As the crowded field surged forward at lights out, Brienne accelerated, and then next to her Janos Slynt got a little too close and she swerved, braking to keep from colliding with Drogo ahead of her. 

“Fuck,” she cursed. 

“You're fine, keep on it,” Jaime reassured her, and she did, for fifty-seven long and difficult laps and two moderately quick pit stops. But she could never get her wheels under her, couldn't get comfortable enough with the track to stop from slowing down too much around the hairpins in sector 2, or from keeping too much distance from Drogo to overtake him on the straightaway in sector 1. When Jaime finally announced it was the last lap she slowed down even further, worried about messing it all up here in one of the last turns, and when she sped past the checkered flag, she had fallen to P-18. 

“You did it!” Jaime shouted, and he sounded genuinely elated by the fact she'd finished a race, even though he had to know as well as she did that her car was so much faster than that. _She_ was so much faster. 

She drove silently to the parc fermé, parked, and hurried to the weigh-in room to beat the others still getting out of their cars, congratulating and trash-talking each other. 

“Brienne-” she heard Jaime say just as she ripped the earpiece out of her ear and disappeared inside. The judges looked shocked to see her, scrambled to get everything ready. Brienne tapped her foot against the scale and then went still when the judge glared at her. 

“You're messing up the reading,” he said firmly, and she tried instead to breathe out the leftover adrenaline. She smacked her lips, suddenly realizing how thirsty she was, how weak she felt after being cramped up in a hot box for almost two hours. “Hold still,” the judge said again and she went as rigid as she could until he nodded, made a note, and ushered her off again. 

There were voices of the others approaching now, and she collided into Viserys as she hurried back out the door. 

“Watch where you're going, bitch,” he spit out and Brienne barely registered it, just nodded, holding her helmet close to her chest, wanting nothing more than to escape. 

“Watch your mouth,” Jaime warned and Brienne jerked her head around. He'd been leaning back against the wall near the door. She hadn't even known he was there. 

Viserys stilled in the doorway, glanced over his shoulder with a sneer. “Or what, Kingslayer? Looking for another Targaryen to murder?”

Brienne grabbed Jaime's arm as he shifted forward. “Don't,” she said quietly. But all her prodding from earlier seemed to have finally done its trick. 

“I'm not sorry he's dead,” Jaime snapped and Brienne had enough time to turn before Viserys was launching himself at Jaime, swinging his helmet. Jaime brought his prosthetic hand up quick enough to deflect it and then he punched awkwardly at Viserys' torso, and the younger man grunted softly, but Jaime had obviously not hit him very hard. Brienne put her hand on each man's torso and shoved them apart, sending them stumbling backward – Viserys further than Jaime. 

One of the judges ran out of the building and shouted “That's enough!” as he joined her in-between the two of them, and they each halted, glaring. 

The media had mostly been capturing all the winners and losers of the race, but there was a WSN camera nearby taping the post-race weigh-in that had recorded every second, and enough bystanders with cellphones that Brienne knew this would be all over Formula 1 news by evening. 

“Come on,” she said, going again for Jaime's arm, but he yanked it away and strode off on his own. 

“Coward,” Viserys called after him, and Brienne knew Jaime heard because his broad shoulders went taut, but he didn't stop. Daario arrived next and she could see the Kraken and Griffin teams not too far away. Soon this would be one of the most unbearable spots on the planet. But Viserys wasn't done with her yet. “What about you, Kingslayer's whore? I bet those Baelish rumors _are_ true.”

“I bet you wish they were,” she snarled. “Bribery's the only way you'd get any woman to sleep with you.” 

“I think the Kingslayer has more problems getting women than I do. One fumbling hand in the dark. He must be a real catch. You know it's too bad my father couldn't have taught him a lesson, that spoiled, selfish--”

Without thinking Brienne shoved Viserys with both hands – and all her hard-earned strength – and he went crashing to the asphalt, his helmet bouncing and rolling away. 

“Stop it!” the judge yelled, holding his hands out to ward her off. “You've earned a five-second penalty at the next race.” 

“What?” she gasped. “You heard what he said!”

“We don't resort to physical violence! You're lucky I don't make it ten because of what your engineer did.” 

“Fuck you,” she bit out and the man's face went purple. 

“Ten seconds!” 

Pod came bursting in-between them then, chest heaving from having run all the way from the Evenstar garage. The entire altercation had obviously been playing live somewhere, because Arya was hot on his heels and most of the rest of Evenstar's crew were following, some of Dragonfire trailing behind, realizing belatedly what was going on. 

Jaime, thankfully, seemed to have disappeared. 

“B-b-brienne,” Pod managed, facing her, his gentle face creased with worry. “C-come on.” He was gripping her elbow with both hands and she went limp suddenly, the rage and the nerves and the last of the post-race energy washing out of her. She felt like limp seaweed left to dry on the shore. 

She turned her back on the judge and Viserys, who was muttering something as he let Daario help him to his feet. Arya looked like she was ready to jump in next, but Brienne shook her head tightly at the other woman and Bronn shepherded Arya away, too, saying something too quiet for Brienne to hear. The rest of her crew arranged themselves around them, giving out only hard-eyed glares to the media belatedly rushing up begging for information. 

“What the fuck was that?” Bronn said low and harsh as they neared their garage. 

“A mistake.” 

“No shit.” She felt his eyes on her. “Just because you didn't crash on the track doesn't mean you have to do it off.” 

Her shoulders slumped. “I know. I was just...” She didn't know what she was. Mad at Viserys, for sure; mad at Jaime, too, she supposed, but mostly mad at herself. She'd always believed herself to be strong, but she wasn't strong enough for any of this. “Where is he?”

Bronn gestured to her driver's room and she nodded. She didn't knock when she opened the door, and Jaime didn't look up. He was sitting on the couch – the new one they'd so happily broken in on Friday – his elbows on his knees, his flesh and blood fingers rubbing unceasingly over his silicone and metal ones. 

“I'm sorry,” he said. 

She sat down next to him, close but not touching. “Me too.” 

“How much of a penalty did I get you?” 

“Five seconds for you. Five seconds for me.” 

Jaime did look at her then, surprised. “What did you do?”

“I shoved Viserys after you left.” 

“Brienne,” he sighed. “I'm a bad influence on you.”

“You think I never pushed over some punk before?” she asked, and she saw his lips twitch. 

“Ten seconds. That's not great, and they'll apply it in the pit lane. You don't know agony until you're stuck waiting in the pits for time you don't have.”

She shrugged. “What does it matter? I came in eighteenth today.” 

“Yeah, _today_. Next race is wide open.” His eyes were deep with concern. “Don't stop racing already.” 

“I won't,” she said, and then again: “I won't,” when he kept staring at her. 

“We'll find something that works to get you out of your head. The woman who drove that first qualifying in Sunspear is still you.” 

“I wish I knew where that me went.” 

“You're right in front of me. You finished a Formula 1 race, Brienne. Do you know how few people in the history of humanity have done that? And even less women. You're just nervous. Nerves we can fix.”

“I keep seeing the crash.” Brienne gripped her own hands together, the bones of her fingers rubbing against each other she held them so tightly. “I keep thinking about Galladon. About you.” 

Jaime exhaled slowly. “I'm okay. And your brother...it wasn't the same. Your car will protect you. _We_ will protect you. I promise.” 

She unwrapped her hands and touched her fingers to his, stilling them. “I won't let you make that promise. If something were to happen--”

“Nothing's going to happen.”

“_If_ it were,” she insisted, “I won't let you hold yourself responsible for something you can't control.”

“How'd that work out for you?” he asked, and though his tone was sharp, she knew it came from a deep-seated fear. 

“Maybe because I've been through it you should listen to me.” He pursed his lips at her, but he didn't protest. “No promises?”

“No promises. Not about crashing, at least. I did make a promise about numbers I intend to keep.” 

Brienne snorted with laughter and Jaime grinned hopefully at her. Gods, she loved him and his mercurial moods and his suggestive smiles, his sharp edges and his soft heart. She couldn't imagine doing any of this without him. She tried not to imagine what it might be like if they didn't beat Lannister Corp and all the love and happiness pouring out of him in the photo across the way – in his emerald eyes next to her now – dried up in the unforgiving heat of her failure. They both needed her to do better. “What place did Lancel come in?” she asked quietly. 

“Seventh. Could be worse. There's a lot of season left, and he's not as good as you are. You'll see, once we work through this. I promise,” he said, and his tone brooked no argument. 

Brienne curled her hand around his and squeezed. “That's a promise I know you can keep.”


	34. April (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was storming outside, not anywhere near as badly as last year, but fat drops that pattered the window in a way that must have seemed inviting to Brienne. He was unsurprised to find her flushed and soaking wet when she returned, her stride easier than it had been in weeks. 
> 
> “Are you ready for this?” he asked her before she kissed him with her cold lips. 
> 
> “Yes,” she said, not nervous or worried, just eager to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a tiny bit early this week. Why? *waves hand vaguely at...everything*

**Lannister Corp Racing: 16 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 0 pts**

“Jaime, stop. It's not going to fit.” 

“It will. Look, if I just turn--”

“Ow!” Brienne rubbed her shin and glared at him. “Do you really need this particular chair?” 

“I thought you wanted me to feel like this was my home, too?”

She did, although every time one of them called her house, “our house,” it still sounded odd to her ears, like a familiar note played slightly off. Brienne grunted and re-adjusted her grip. “I still think it would fit better in the other corner.” 

“That's because you lack imagination. This is the last piece, let's finish this and then we can relax.”

“We can't. Dad wanted us to have dinner with him and Elenda tonight.” 

Jaime tugged the chair one last time and stepped back, his hands on his hips. “That sounds awkward,” he said. 

“I'm not looking forward to it,” she admitted. Brienne stepped back, too, looked at the chair and sighed. He'd been right; it looked better here, a finishing touch instead of a piece of furniture that stuck out where it didn't belong. Jaime looked good in her – their – house, too. Like he was meant to be there. 

Their styles had meshed fairly well, especially since most of what Jaime had in Tarth wasn't his anyway. He said he had most of his things in a storage space back in King's Landing, so they'd sold off what they could from his Tarth apartment and moved the rest: this chair, his much nicer sheet and towel sets, his clothes and books and TV. There was still an over-packed suitcase in the bedroom waiting for them to figure out how to best share her smaller closet, and a box of racing knick-knacks she wanted to buy a special shelf for, but otherwise he was fully moved in. With her. Until at least the end of the season and maybe beyond. They hadn't talked about that at all, and Brienne was fine just leaving it as a future problem. She had enough problems to worry about in the present. 

Her and Arya's interview with Melisandre, at least, wasn't one of them. That had been surprisingly painless and even a little fun. Melisandre had kept to her promise not to ask about what was happening between Evenstar and Lannister Corp, and didn't even reference the altercation between them and Viserys the day before. Instead she asked about how Brienne's season was going and how she and Arya had connected with the other women in the garages. When Asha and Ygritte had walked by engaged in some unrelated conversation, Melisandre had invited them to join, too. The interview had devolved after that into the other three Evenstar women – unnecessarily, to Brienne's mind – praising her, and then engaging in a series of in-jokes that no viewer could possibly understand. But when Jaime had called time after keeping a close eye on his watch, Melisandre hadn't seemed annoyed at all. She'd looked almost wistful. 

While her cameraman had shut things down, she'd turned to Brienne and the other women. “You seem like you've formed a strong bond already,” she'd said. “I hope you enjoy the rest of the season.” 

“We will,” Arya had assured her. “It'll only get better as Brienne keeps improving.” 

“Your first podium is going to be special,” Melisandre had said. 

“Well, we can't assume that will happen,” Brienne had responded immediately. It felt like a curse to even suggest it when she'd barely finished one race. Melisandre had only smiled and bid them well. 

The response had been immediate and overwhelmingly positive according to Pia, a perfectly timed distraction from the backlash to the images of Brienne shoving Viserys to the ground. No one seemed surprised Jaime had been in a fight, but the racing world had been apoplectic not just that Brienne would, but who she was fighting with. Although Brienne knew Pia was shielding her from most of the negative responses, it was hard to miss the local newspaper casually left on a table in the hotel lobby Monday morning with the headline 'Don't Pull Her Pigtails!' and a picture of Brienne in the middle of shoving Viserys. She'd flopped the paper over to hide it and hurried away. Monday afternoon as they were all leaving the small airport on Tarth, she overheard Jaime complaining to Addam about what Viserys had called her – Kingslayer's whore – and how he hoped it wouldn't spread. 

Fortunately, with another race on the schedule, there hadn't been time to go poking around the internet herself to find out. Not when Addam had her training on the virtual racer multiple times a day, Syrio had intensified his exercise regimen, there were little bits to be filmed for IAF commercials and interviews and social media moments, and she still held daily meetings with Jaime and the mechanics to check on the progress of the car, review footage from the last two races, and strategize for Gulltown. The work was relentless and now that it was the in-between weekend, Brienne wanted to do nothing more than spend it holed up with Jaime in her house. Their house. 

“Sunday I promise we'll barely get out of bed,” he said when she complained about it again as they got ready to go to her father's. 

“Are you sure we can't start tonight?”

“You're only saying that because you know he'll blame me if we do.” He tugged the collar of his shirt, settled the lapels of his casual suit jacket. “Good?”

He could be wearing a paper bag and he'd still look good, but she didn't need to tell him that. “Great,” she offered. She looked down at herself. “Does this look like I'm trying too hard?”

It had been a warm spring day and she was wearing a long, loose light blue sundress that didn't make her feel too awkward, and simple white sandals that tied up around her calves. 

“Only like you're trying too hard to convince me to take you back to bed,” Jaime said, prowling closer for a swift, firm kiss. 

“Is it working?” she asked hopefully. 

“Yes, but we still have to go.” He kissed her again, slower this time, lingering long enough that she curled her fingers in the hair growing long at his neck and he sighed into her mouth and pulled away. “We do have to go. But we're coming back to this right after.” 

“I might be too full then,” she teased him. 

He just lifted a very eloquent eyebrow and then grinned wickedly when she immediately went red at the unspoken innuendo. 

“You're so annoying,” she said, pulling out of his arms and grabbing the two bottles of wine they'd bought for tonight. 

“It's part of my charm.” 

They walked the short distance to her father's house, the two structures close but still far enough away that neither of them could hear anything the other couple got up to, for which Brienne was more grateful than ever. She'd discovered over the last two months that now that they didn't have to hide anything, Jaime really enjoyed seeing how loud he could make her get. 

She'd gotten quite loud. 

Brienne knew her cheeks were still pink when she knocked on her dad's door, yet another new twist to an old part of her life. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't just gone right in, but they'd both agreed that in light of everything it was for the best now. Jaime had his prosthetic hand resting at the small of her back, and he tapped his foot while they waited. 

“Nervous?” she whispered. 

“A little.”

“Me too,” she said. 

Her dad opened the door and beamed at them. “Hi, short stuff! Jaime! Come on in.” He hugged her, shook Jaime's left hand and clasped him warmly on the shoulder. Her father had adjusted quickly to the the reality of their living together, and it made her heart happy to see him opening up to Jaime, and to see Jaime opening up to him. Jaime especially seemed to enjoy the brief moments he and Selwyn spent together; she'd watched him just a few days ago when her father had visited the offices and Jaime had walked him through all the work that was being done. There'd been an almost boyish need for approval in Jaime, and when her father had praised him for how well it was all being run – “I told you, you don't need me at all!” he'd boomed sincerely – Jaime's whole face had lit with pleasure. 

“Thanks for the invite,” Jaime said now and Selwyn smiled. 

Elenda was standing off to one side in the kitchen, looking as nervous as they were. What with their schedules, this was only the second time Brienne had met her, and Jaime's first. 

“Hi,” Brienne said, and Elenda smiled. 

“Hello, Brienne. It's good to see you again.” Her voice was calmer than last time when everything had been all awkwardness, and Brienne found herself relaxing under its soothing timbre. “And this is your young man?” she asked, turning to Jaime. 

Jaime gave Elenda a disarming smile, a look that inevitably made Brienne's knees weak, but the older woman seemed no more charmed than before. “You see?” he said to Brienne as he shook Elenda's hand. “I told you I was young.”

Brienne rolled her eyes but Elenda laughed a little and glanced at Selwyn. “I see what you mean,” she said mysteriously and Jaime and Brienne exchanged curious looks. 

“Dinner will be ready in a bit,” Selwyn said. “Just some roast chicken and vegetables. I thought we could spend some time talking on the deck since it's a nice night. Brienne, why don't you help me get drinks while they go get settled?” 

It was an obvious gambit to get her alone, but they split up without comment, Jaime opening the backdoor for Elenda as he asked her about what she thought of living on Tarth. 

Brienne's father grabbed a few bottles of local beer and handed them to her, then went back in the fridge for a pitcher of chilled water that had cucumbers and mint floating in it. “I know you're on racing diet,” he said and she nodded, resigned. 

“I haven't seen much of you,” he continued, going for glasses. “How are you, darling?”

“I'm good. Too busy to think much beyond the next moment, but it's good.”

“You feel ready for Gulltown?”

She adjusted the bottles in her hand, the glass gently clanking like dull windchimes. “The car's ready.” 

“That's not what I asked.” 

“I think I'm ready, too. We'll see when I get on the track.” 

He turned and frowned at her, his hands full. “You don't sound confident.” 

“The first two races haven't been great. You saw.” Not in person, or even live, but he'd watched each one after they were over, once he knew she was safe. Both times afterward he'd focused on everything she'd done right, ignoring any of her mistakes. She appreciated his positivity most days, but the laser focus on it could be its own kind of exhausting sometimes. “It's different being on the asphalt. Everything's more real.” 

Selwyn made a small, considering noise but gestured for her to head outside. “I believe in you,” he said as she held open the door for him. 

Jaime and Elenda looked up from where they were sitting in the deck chairs, and Jaime stood to come grab the pitcher from her father. She saw Elenda follow the action with her eyes, amused.

Once they were seated with their drinks – beers for Selwyn and Elenda, flavored water for her and Jaime, who had been trying to match Brienne's diet in solidarity – the talk dripped haltingly at first, then quickly started to flow, moving from discussions of Evenstar Racing and the significance of what Brienne was trying to do, to how Elenda and Selwyn had met and what she was doing on Tarth. 

“I'm a teacher,” she said, and Brienne felt her heart clench a little. Her own mother had been a teacher and in all the long years since her death, she couldn't recall her father ever dating another one, as though it was too much a reminder. She glanced at him, but he was beaming at Elenda, happy and unbothered. “Rather, I _was_. I retired when my husband got sick and decided not to go back after his death. I thought maybe I'd come here and see if it would be easier in a whole new place.” 

“What was he like?” Jaime asked. 

Brienne frowned at him, but Elenda smiled gently.

“It's all right, it's nice to talk about him now. I don't like to treat him as though he never existed. I'm sure you know,” she said softly to Brienne, who thought immediately of the brother she loved and the mother she could barely remember, and nodded. “He was a businessman. It sounds absurd when I say it like that, but he truly was. Vice-president of a technology company. He worked too much but when he was home he was home, not stuck at his computer. He loved woodworking in his spare time. Spent so much time in his head, I suppose he liked to use his hands, too. Couldn't cook worth a damn, unlike your father.” 

Selwyn smiled. “I had to learn, after Liane died. Couldn't let the children grow up on just chicken nuggets and french fries.”

“You _could_ have,” Brienne said lightly, and they all laughed. 

“Speaking of,” Selwyn said, “I should go check on the meal, it should be nearly done. Jaime, come help me, will you?” 

Jaime nodded, setting his glass down. He kissed Brienne on the top of the head as he walked by and when they'd gone back inside, she discovered Elenda watching her, calm and curious. 

“I don't know anything about racing, but I confess I looked Jaime up after Selwyn and I started dating. Quite a history. A lot of rumors.” 

Brienne straightened, knowing she was bristling and unwilling to stop it. “Most of them false.”

“I can see that. Five minutes with the man and it's obvious what he's really like.” Brienne settled again, nodding. “You two seem extraordinarily close. How long have you been together?” 

“Since February,” she said. “But he hired me to be his Chief Mechanic last January, as you probably know if you searched him. We've spent a lot of time together just through work.” They had, she realized; days and days and days at each other's side for over a year and she never tired of seeing him again each morning. 

“He's quite handsome,” Elenda said like they were conspirators and friends and Brienne snorted. 

“Don't tell him that.”

Elenda laughed. “I won't; I know the type.” 

“You and my father are pretty close, too,” Brienne said, trying to sound nonchalant, Elenda's wry smile evidence that she had failed. 

“I was waiting for this part,” she said, not unkindly. 

“I don't usually get to meet the girlfriend until it's been a couple of months,” Brienne admitted, trying not to get her father in trouble if they hadn't talked about his past, too. 

“He mentioned that. And, yes, he's told me about the string of women. We talk a lot. I suppose that's why we're so close already.” 

“Oh,” Brienne said, recategorizing Elenda from the pool of every other woman to something new. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. “Do you have any kids?”

“No. Neither of us was interested, honestly. I had the kids I was teaching and that was always enough. It was pretty great getting to leave them behind and go home to a tidy house every night to do what we wanted,” she said on a small laugh. “My husband and I agreed on that point. That one is a dealbreaker, if one partner wants one way too strongly and the other doesn't.” 

“Yeah,” Brienne said, chewing her lip. She had never given much thought to the question either way, herself, and she suspected Jaime hadn't either. His life had been racing and her life had been hemmed in by how she looked. Not that long ago, even having a boyfriend had seemed impossible, let alone everything after. 

“Good thing you're young,” Elenda said, patting her knee. “You have plenty of time to figure that one out.” 

“Ladies, dinner's ready!” Selwyn called from the kitchen. 

Brienne shoved the question away as best she could through dinner, only catching herself staring at Jaime a few times, wondering what he would look like holding a baby, if he'd be a good father, if he even wanted to be one. His own was so terrible, it was entirely possible he had no interest in doing it himself. But he'd been good with Argella and Lyanna, and she suspected he'd be the same with younger children, too. Whether she wanted to make that particular life decision herself, Brienne had no idea. Babies were intense, from the little she knew of them. Children were loud and messy and she didn't think she'd want to be gone ten months out of the year if she had one. 

But she liked Argella and Lyanna, too, had always felt a soft spot towards the children they'd encountered at the track, had even cooed over babies with their giant headphones to protect their ears from the noise of the crowds and the cars. Having one of her own wasn't entirely off the table, even if she hadn't been aware up till this moment that there even was a table. 

By the end of the evening, Brienne felt far more confident about Elenda and far more confused about everything else. As they walked back to their house after saying goodbye – Elenda hugging Brienne tightly and whispering how happy she was to have finally been able to talk, before giving Jaime a quick hug as well – Jaime held Brienne's hand, rubbing his thumb along hers. 

When they were safely inside, he threw his jacket on the new chair and worked on his shoes. “What did you think?” he asked, looking up at Brienne. 

“Of Elenda? I like her. I see why my dad likes her. This one could be serious. What did you think?” 

“I like her, too. She called me young, do you remember that?”

Brienne laughed softly, shaking her head. “For someone so handsome, you're very insecure.” 

“I just don't want you to trade me in for a younger model.” Shoes off, he tugged her over, sat down in the chair and pulled her onto his lap. She kissed him softly, and wondered, again, what she wanted from her future. 

_Him_, she thought, looking into his soft, moss-green eyes. That was the thing of which she was most certain. “You know I wouldn't,” she said seriously, and he gave her an inquisitive smile.

“I know.” Jaime brushed his thumb over the curve of her cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She kissed him again, deeper, letting him know with her lips and tongue how okay she was, and when she shifted her hip she could feel him already getting hard. 

“Good, because I've been imagining all evening what I was going to do to you in that dress,” he said into the bare skin of her neck, his hand tugging at the hem of her dress to pull it up past her knees. “It's a long list. Shall we begin?”

* * *

It was raining in Gulltown again, but this time it was more drizzle than actual rain, and though the forecast called for the same through the weekend, it wouldn't stop the race. The hotel they were at was nowhere near as nice as the one Jaime had been in last year, and though he was growing tired of the beige carpet every mid-level hotel seemed to employ, he had to admit this April was still better than last because Brienne was in the room with him and this time she wouldn't insist on leaving. 

He watched as she unpacked her luggage the same way she always did: toiletries laid out neatly on one side of the bathroom counter, shirts hung in the closet, pants folded and placed in the drawers. Jaime had always left his clothes in his luggage and sometimes just strewn on a chair, although he'd also never had a problem sending wrinkled shirts out to be drycleaned. Brienne had taken to hanging his shirts up for him, too, and in exchange he re-packed everything on Mondays while she watched him. 

She was frowning as she worked, as she had been more often as race weekend got closer. They still hadn't figured out her particular pre-race centering activity, though Jaime had been reading up on all sorts of options in his spare time, from burning incense to two-minute hyper-intense exercise routines. He'd brought materials for one idea in particular, but they would need time for that one, and it would be better if they could find something that was faster and could be done in the garage. 

Before free practice the next day, Jaime pulled out his first suggestion and held it out to her. 

“Why do you have a Rubiks' Cube?” she asked, taking it from him and turning it around in her hands. He'd already spent time twisting it and putting everything out of place, which had been more difficult than he'd expected with only one real hand. His myoelectric prosthesis was amazing, but there were some natural human movements that still came hard. 

“To help focus you,” he said. “Something to worry about that's not driving.” 

He left Brienne with the cube in her driver's room, but when she'd come out to actually drive, she looked more annoyed than when she'd gone in. 

“No?” he said.

“No,” she said grumpily. 

Before qualifying the next day, Jaime set up a toy basketball set in her room, complete with a pile of foam balls. “For dexterity and loosening you up,” he explained, and while they had fun competing against each other, when she steered the car out onto the track slick from the morning rain, she still wasn't driving with the same abandon she had the first time. She finished Q1 at P-16 – better than Myr, but still not nearly fast enough. 

“I've got one more idea,” Jaime said as they rode the bus back to the hotel after the debrief was done. 

Back in their room, while Brienne changed and took a shower to wash off the dust and grime from her drive, Jaime rifled around in his bag to pull out the items he'd brought. He pulled the curtains closed and fussed with each individual light switch until he got just the right mood lighting, then changed into sweat pants and a t-shirt. When Brienne came out of the bathroom in her own sweats, her tanktop clinging to her skin damp and pink from the hot water, her hair slicked back against her head, Jaime almost let himself get distracted from his purpose. 

“What's all this?” She gestured at the small portable speaker playing a highly-recommended relaxation playlist he'd found, the firm roller ball and bottle of oil next to the bed, the dimly lit room in general. 

“You did all right today,” he started, “but we both know you can be faster.” 

“And this is going to help me do that? This seems like the opposite of going faster.”

“Hypnosis works well for some people, especially when combined with touch.” 

“You're going to hypnotize me?” she asked, disbelieving. 

“Not exactly, although we could bring in a hypnotherapist if you want. But I have an idea related to it. I need you to take off your clothes and lay down on your stomach on the bed.” She shot him a look so bland he laughed out loud. “There are a lot easier ways to get you to have sex with me,” he said, grinning. “Onto your stomach, Wrench, let's go.” 

“How come you still don't have a cutesy nickname?” she grumbled, stripping her shirt off with her back to him so he could see every flex of her muscles. Jaime swallowed hard and focused on tidying up a non-existent mess on the desk. When he turned around again she was lying stretched out on the bed, her toes poking over the edge, the firm hill of her ass rising from the mattress, the long slope of her torso settled comfortably into the center. Her head was pillowed on her muscular arms and she was turned so she could watch him approach. She looked like a magnificent present, already unwrapped and waiting to be enjoyed. 

_Sweats were a mistake_, he thought as her eyes drifted down to where he was unable to hide his reaction. It was worse when her lips parted unconsciously, and he watched the pink spread unevenly over her cheeks, down her neck. 

“The problem,” he ground out, kneeling next to her on the bed, “is you're still thinking too much when you're in the car. You have to find a way to let your very capable body do what it needs to do while your mind focuses on strategy instead. Right now, you're still thinking about driving first, and racing is hardly about driving at all.”

“That sounds like a riddle,” she murmured, moving her head to keep her eyes on him while he grabbed the roller ball. 

“The answer to it is the key to your season. You have to feel the car with your whole body. Not just your head or your hands or your feet.” 

“Like my butt?”

“Yes, Wrench, like your butt.” He tapped hers lightly with the ball and she smiled. It was going to be impossible to keep from quitting this halfway through and just ravishing her, but he would do his best. “Now keep quiet and let me be your wise mentor, will you?”

She pressed her lips together and moved one hand enough to press her finger to them like a promise, looking so bright and happy he squeezed the roller ball hard with his hand to distract himself. 

“I did actually research this,” he continued, “and you need something when you're in the car, a kind of physical trigger, to remind you to let go so you can actually drive and not just think about driving. Do you remember what it felt like at your very first qualifying run?”

She nodded. “Like the car was a part of me.” 

“Exactly,” he said. “This roller ball and I are going to remind you of that on each part of your body, so that when you're back in the car tomorrow, and you're sitting in the cockpit and feeling all the same pressure, you'll be thinking of this and not everything else your mind goes to. It's called hypnotic touch induction. You're not really hypnotized, it's just teaching your body that it wants to be relaxed when it feels certain touches.” 

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at him. “You really did research this.” 

“Your distrust wounds me,” he said lightly. “I'm going to start with your head and work my way down. None of this should hurt, so if it does, tell me. I'm trying to relax you, not make any of it worse.” 

Jaime rubbed his fingers through her hair to her scalp, massaging firmly from the top of her head downward. He kept his voice low and even as he spoke, and her eyes closed as he talked. “When you're racing, you'll have your helmet on, encasing your entire head, keeping you safe. You'll feel the pressure of it and you'll think about my hand on your head instead, the feel of my fingers pushing out the stress. You'll be able to think about the race ahead of you.” He moved his hand down to her neck where the muscles were taut and strong, and he dug his knuckles in with care. “You'll have your brace on here, support and protection both. When you feel the pressure, your muscles will relax and you'll be able to focus on the road ahead of you.” On a whim, Jaime leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the hard bump of her spine and she sighed contentedly under his lips. “You'll think of me,” he said softly, “and you won't have to worry.” 

When she nodded a little, his heart beat with a hard, deep urgency to pull her close, but he moved on to her shoulders, fumbling for a minute with the massage oil and dripping it awkwardly into his hand. “You'll feel the seat firm against your shoulders and back,” he went on, walking her through the sensations as he made long, solid strokes up and down her back with his hand, leaving the roller ball to the side. He'd brought it in case he couldn't do this well enough one-handed and he was relieved to discover he could – it would just take more time. That was fine with him. Jaime kissed her shoulder-blades, too, and between them, not lingering nearly as long as he'd like, but covering her body with the feel of his mouth to keep her fears at bay. 

It took him half an hour to make his way down her back, her ass, the absurd length of her legs. He wanted to linger at her strong thighs, but he forced himself to move on. When he kissed the back of her knee she shivered, and the erection he'd been fighting the entire time surged harder. He wasn't going to make it much longer, and by the way her hips rolled in small waves against the mattress whenever his hand glided smoothly over her skin, neither would she. 

Jaime turned to her feet, where she twitched, ticklish. He nestled one foot in the crook of his arm and used the end of his stump like a foam roller on her, pushing the soft, scarred edge into her arch until she moaned. Her skin gleamed all over from the oil he'd so thoroughly rubbed in, and when he glanced between her spread legs he saw she was glistening there, too. 

“Brienne,” he gasped, unable to wait any longer, “lift your hips up.” She did, immediately, and he pulled off his shirt and tugged down his sweat pants just enough to free himself. She was rosy red between her legs, the hair there turned gold with her wetness. _Red and gold. My colors_, Jaime realized, palming her ass with his good hand, his stump resting lightly at her hip. _Mine,_ he thought as he slid into her and she cried out under him. 

He briefly wondered what kind of hypnotic response she'd have in the car tomorrow by making it all the way through to the end with the massage and then taking her slowly and surely from behind. Hopefully a good one, given she was making the high-pitched, sharp little noises already that meant she was close to the edge. Jaime leaned forward so they were pressed together and slid his hand over her hip, down between the hair at her center and rubbed lightly until she was clenched all around him, demanding he follow her over. He did, of course he did, eager and wanting and far too soon even though he'd been impatient to do this since they'd begun. 

Brienne slid off of him and back down flat onto the bed, breathing out in deep exhalations, until one of them turned into a yawn. 

Jaime arranged himself next to her, his front slick with the oil he'd rubbed off of her back. “You should take another shower,” he said as his eyes closed. 

“Mm,” she agreed. 

“You're relaxed?”

“Mm-hm.” She snuggled deeper into her pillow and he gave in to the demands of his heart and pulled her against him, pressed his palm to her chest to feel the beat of hers. Her body melded against his, smelling faintly of whatever flower scent they used in the oil and deeply of herself and he pressed his nose to her neck to breathe her in. 

They were both asleep within minutes.

* * *

The next morning Jaime woke to find Brienne was gone. He blinked and looked around the room, found a hastily scribbled note on the hotel paper: _Gone for a run. Back in time for breakfast. Love you, Brienne_. 

Jaime carefully tore the paper off and tucked it into his suitcase. It felt silly but she'd never actually written down that she loved him before – not in texts, not in email, just here, while she was in a hurry to get going and she hadn't really thought about it at all.

It was storming outside, not anywhere near as badly as last year, but fat drops that pattered the window in a way that must have seemed inviting to Brienne. He was unsurprised to find her flushed and soaking wet when she returned, her stride easier than it had been in weeks. 

“Are you ready for this?” he asked her before she kissed him with her cold lips. 

“Yes,” she said, not nervous or worried, just eager to begin. 

The race director cancelled driver's parade because of the rain and by the time Brienne returned with Podrick from weigh-in – everyone had decided it would be better if Jaime steered clear of other drivers for at least a few weeks – the change in her energy was undeniable. The crew seemed to be feeding off it, moving with renewed purpose, shouting jokes and advice back and forth across the car. 

Jaime handed her her helmet after she'd pulled on her balaclava. “Remember: rain is the great equalizer, and you have plenty of experience driving in it. Create your own environment out there – who and how close you follow, where on the track you take your corners. Use the rain to your advantage.” 

She nodded and pulled on her helmet, her eyes bright as stars through the opening. “Anything else?” she asked, her voice muffled by the layers of fiberglass. 

“You've got this,” he said. He could tell by the crinkling of her eyes that she was smiling and he tugged her helmet down and kissed the top of it before sending her to Podrick to get her settled in the car while Jaime dashed across the pit lane through the rain to the gantry. 

Addam was there already, looking at the weather pattern radar. “It's going to rain most of this race,” he said. 

“Good. I think that will help.”

“She seems more relaxed today.” 

Jaime grinned at his monitor, thinking about last night. “Yeah, weird.” 

He ignored Addam's narrow-eyed stare and instead looked back over his shoulder, saw Brienne pulling out into the lane to head for the grid. “Radio check,” Jaime said. 

“Loud and clear.” 

“Feeling all those pressure points this morning?” he asked casually and though she made a choking kind of laugh, her car pulled smoothly into place, directed by the crew. 

“I'm certainly aware of what we discussed,” she said, her tone rich with a knowing amusement, and he felt Addam squinting even harder in his direction. 

He kept up the light banter with her as the mechanics made their final adjustments, as Brienne wove through her formation lap, until she grew less responsive as the cars arranged themselves one last time on the grid. 

“You've got the strategy?” he asked, worried that somehow he'd lost her, that she'd retreated back into the nerves and fear. 

“Drive fast,” she said, and he knew in that instant she would be okay. 

“Lights out!” the announcer roared with the crowd and the cars, and the race was on. Jaime had discovered these last few weeks that watching the race as an engineer instead of navigating it as a driver meant everything went more slowly, but it was no less exciting. There was a constant flow of information on the screens arrayed before them: weather info, reports from the onboard computers, positions of the other drivers, even readings from the mandatory biometric gloves Brienne wore – and it was up to Jaime to parse it all, to get Addam's input on strategy changes, Bronn's insight into how the engine was running, piece it all together, and relay the most important parts to Brienne. He was her contact back to the team, too, the person who shared the reports of how the tires felt, how the front and back-end were handling. Jaime was the one-stop shop for the entire race, and he'd discovered he loved it. 

His pulse had picked up as it always did, the first few turns a nerve-wracking experience to watch as the cars hummed and growled near each other, fighting for dominance. Brienne had started at P-16, but by turn five she was at P-14 and driving strong. 

The rain had made the track a slippery mess, and by the end of the first lap, Janos Slynt was already out of the race, spinning into the sidewall when his tires locked up. The cars were keeping a fair distance from each other and their rooster tail spray of water that soared behind them on the wet asphalt. Getting close was a recipe for disaster; it was too dangerous to get a face full of spray just trying to hover near while cornering, which meant most of the overtaking today was going to have to happen on the straights or via smart pit positioning. 

They'd gone into Gulltown intending to take three pit stops – with the ten second penalty there had been a quiet resignation that making top ten was out of the question. But Brienne had seemed so energized this morning that during the period when she should have been at the drivers' parade, she, Jaime, and Addam had conferred and decided to switch to a two pit-stop strategy instead. As she sped confidently through the rain past yet another spin out – Daario this time – Jaime knew they'd made the right call. Other teams would likely be eager to switch to a second pair of rain tires before finally going to the hards and then the softs for their final run, worried that the track would be too slick on used tires; but Brienne was driving exquisitely on the water, and she could be left out there to manage her tires without worrying she'd be losing too much positioning. 

When she came in for her first pit stop, she was in P-11. But the large countdown timer next to their garage blazed with a bright red 10 and as soon as her car was tires-down on the ground again, it started counting. Brienne revved the engine as she sat there for the longest ten seconds in all of their lives. Jaime glanced at the screen, saw her drop to P-12 and then P-13 as others passed them by, then P-14 when Drogo whizzed past her as he exited the pit lane, before the timer hit 0 and she roared after him. 

Jaime kicked himself for being the cause of the delay, and although Brienne fought back to P-12 – a remarkable improvement that the crew leapt up and hugged each other about after she'd passed the checkered flag – he sighed as he tugged his headset off and settled it around his neck. 

“She did great!” Addam said, clapping him on the back, and when Jaime didn't respond with the same enthusiasm, he frowned. “She did,” he said more intensely, like Jaime was disappointed in Brienne and not himself. 

“I know that. But she would've gotten her first points without the penalty. A penalty that was my fault.” 

Addam's furrowed brow smoothed with understanding. “Yeah, you're right. Five of those seconds were yours and she wouldn't have hit Viserys if you'd just left him alone.” 

“You didn't hear the way he talked about her,” Jaime said, glaring. “I couldn't let that stand.” 

“This is the consequence of your inability to not hit people for insulting Brienne.” 

“Viserys hit me first,” Jaime muttered. 

“I'm not saying I disagree with what you did. I'd have done the same.” Addam smiled and slung his arm around Jaime's shoulders, guiding him back to the garage. “Just keep all this in mind next time, and come tell your driver how proud you are of her now.”

Jaime anxiously waited for Brienne in the pit lane, wondering if she'd be as equanimous about everything as Addam, but as soon as she was close enough, she met his eyes and smiled. With every step closer he breathed a little easier, until she was right in front of him. 

“Good work,” he said. “You did great today. I guess my hypnosis suggestion paid off.”

“I don't know, could be a coincidence.” 

He put on a very serious look. “Sounds like we're going to need to experiment. Try again in Braavos.” 

“I suppose we will,” Brienne said, matching his tone, though her eyes were twinkling under her wet lashes. Her cheeks were pink and dewy with rain, her hair was pressed firmly against her head in clumps. He wanted to kiss her, tenderly, with all the relieved happiness bursting inside him. 

She leaned towards him first, even though there were cameras all around, and Jaime met her halfway.


	35. April (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment when all five lights were burning, when the engines were snarling waiting to be released, was her favorite of the whole race. There was nothing like the gut-churning anticipation, the entire race waiting before them, all the planning and studying and media work left behind in the paddock where she wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. It would be easy to get addicted to that moment, to try to live in the space where everything was possible and nothing had yet been done. 
> 
> But there was still an entire race to be run and when the lights went out in Braavos, she was more ready for that race than she'd been in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to jencat & dragonzair for assuring me posting early was not going to disrupt the space-time continuum since we're all feeling out-of-time anyway. Hee.

**Lannister Corp Racing: 26 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 0 pts**

The track at Braavos was, Brienne realized her first time there, not actually _in_ Braavos. For all of Braavos' hundred isles, none of them was big and centrally located enough to host a Formula 1 track and all of the people attending, and still have space to park every vehicle that would need it. Instead they had built the track on a flattened section of Braavosian Coastland to the south and everyone had silently agreed to just refer to it as the Braavos Grand Prix. 

Brienne appreciated the irony of one of the richest cities in the world unable to use any of that wealth to overcome nature's peculiarities. Even for someone whose life had been dedicated to helping humans conquer the limits of speed, she was too much a product of Tarth to not appreciate the fact that sometimes nature just won. 

It had not conquered the city of Braavos itself, though, and as they circled waiting to land, Brienne peered eagerly out the airplane window at the lagoon below crowded with busy islands and bridges. They hadn't had any time to explore the city when she'd been here last year, but this year Pia had been making Brienne and Jaime do a silly travelogue series for their social media sites and they had plans to go see the Titan of Braavos that afternoon. The series had started in Sunspear as they were ferrying over. Brienne had been taking video on her phone of their arrival when Jaime had stepped in front of the camera and given an hysterically inaccurate description of what they were seeing. With Brienne's nerves after the crash they hadn't done anything in Myr and Pia had tentatively approached her when they were home again, saying that they'd had a number of fans asking when the next one would be. After the race in Gulltown, Brienne had filmed Jaime taking them on a tour of their mid-level hotel. He started with the ice machine on their floor, claiming it was “ice fresh from the Wall!” and it had only spiraled from there. 

She anticipated this trip would include an inappropriate number of references to looking up the Titan's armored skirt, but she'd armed herself with facts as a defense, as any good tour guide would do. 

Fifteen minutes in, before the tour boat the team had rented for the afternoon had even gotten near the Titan's feet, Jaime easily blew past her secret bet with herself that he'd talk about the Titan's balls at least three times. 

Brienne turned her phone's camera towards Bronn. “I blame you for this,” she said and he managed to look believably offended. 

“I have a more refined sense of humor than _that_,” Bronn protested, and the face Podrick made set Brienne to laughing so hard Jaime had to take the phone out of her hand before she dropped it in the water. 

Friday morning, the video was all over social media and Pia was reading out highlights of the best responses on the bus ride. By Friday evening, Pod's expression had become a meme. 

Brienne arrived for qualifying on Saturday as relaxed and ready as she'd ever been. She had done well in Gulltown, maybe even well enough to earn points if she hadn't earned the time penalty in Myr. Whether it really had been the hypnotic sureness of Jaime's affirmations, the almost unbearably sensual feeling of his hand all over her body, or the comfort of the storm, Brienne had felt electrified that Sunday, full of her own confidence for the first time since Q1 in Sunspear. Driving in the rain had settled her further; it had helped to know all the drivers were in the same boat on wet track in a way they could never be on dry. 

Now the memory of that self-assurance settled over her shoulders again as she drove her out-lap for her first turn at a good time for Q1. 

“What position are you thinking today, Wrench?” Jaime asked over the radio. 

“P-10.” 

“I like it. Confident but achievable.” 

The parabolica at Braavos was one of the most famous corners in all of racing, a long right-hander that drivers hit coming out of one of the fastest straights in racing, before hurtling into another straight immediately after. Brienne had spent hours going over just this turn in the simulator, practicing different times and amounts to brake. She'd crashed her virtual car seventeen times in a row before getting it right for the first time, and after that she'd only crashed it two more times when she was testing out a faster speed for qualifying. Brienne could have driven this section of the Braavos Grand Prix blindfolded by the time she was speeding down the straightaway for real during her flying lap. 

“Just like you practiced,” Jaime told her as she neared the end of the first straightaway, and Brienne exhaled, braking at the same spot she'd done it so many times before on the simulator, and the car responded the same, shuddering a little at the abrupt weight of the g-forces, the steering wheel wanting to jerk out of her hands as she yanked it hard to the right, but she and the tires and the car held on. She feathered the throttle lightly to get the car out of the apex, before accelerating hard and coming out wide and already picking up speed for the second straight. 

“Perfect!” Jaime exclaimed. “You're doing great.” 

She made it to P-14 for Q1 and then, after pushing herself harder, finished her first ever Q2 at P-11. Not what she'd hoped for, but close enough she was grinning when she pulled the car back to the garage. 

Jaime was waiting for her when she hopped out. 

“Only P-11,” he said, but his face with lit with teasing. 

“I guess I still need that hypnosis trick tonight.” 

“I'd be happy to assist you, my lady,” Jaime murmured. 

Bronn, who had been walking over, made an exasperated noise deep in his chest and kept walking by. 

The next morning, with the memory of Jaime's fingers still on her skin, his words curled around her heart, Brienne stepped onto the single flatbed truck that all the drivers were taking together around the track for the parade. She was the last one, having the furthest to walk from the Evenstar garage, and every head turned her way when she clambered on board. She was taller than all of them except Drogo, who matched her in height. She hadn't talked to the Dothrak drivers at all, although she'd seen her crew and theirs engaging in friendly banter a few times. Neither Drogo nor Rhaego seemed particularly interested in her as either an oddity or a competitor, and she figured indifference was about the best she could ask for. As she took a space by herself in a corner opposite of Lancel's, Drogo came to stand next to her as the truck jerked and chugged to a start. 

They faced the crowds, everyone waving, and Brienne enjoyed being a part of just cheering for once, even if most of it wasn't for her. 

“You drove well today,” Drogo said as he waved at a small pack of Dothrak fans dressed with bells all in their hair. It was an ancient tradition of the Dothraki people which had been co-opted by the fanbase. She wondered how Drogo felt about it. 

“Thanks,” she said. She spotted a few blue shirts all grouped together and gave them a small wave, and they jumped up and down excitedly. 

“You think you can get points?”

It wasn't asked as an accusation or disbelief, just simple curiosity. “I do,” she said. 

He considered her and shrugged. “Gonna be tough. Braavos is harder with other cars around.” 

“What about you?” she asked. He'd qualified at P-15 today. 

“If my car was better, I'd be in pole.” 

That was what every one of the mid-field and back drivers believed. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – for most of them, they'd never get a chance to prove whether it was true or not. She made a noncommittal noise and waved at a random group of fans. 

“Hey Tarth,” Loras said from a few feet away. “You really think you're going to get a top ten finish? Who do you think you're going to out-race? Me?”

“If I have to. But Euron's just ahead of me, I'll push through him first.” 

Euron's head swiveled at the mention of his name and he gave her a thorough once-over from her head to her feet. “I'm not Viserys,” he sneered. “You might be big enough here, but we're all the same size in the car.” 

“Sounds like the pep talk you tell yourself naked in front of the mirror every morning,” she said, startled and pleased at her own response; Drogo and Loras both laughed. 

“Fuck off,” Euron grunted, turning his back on them without another word. 

Loras shifted to stand even nearer Renly and she watched the two of them waving to a group of Stag Motors fans. He was near enough that his curly hair brushed Renly's shoulder, their hips almost touching. There was room for them to be standing further apart, but neither seemed interested in it. She felt a swift kick of knowing sympathy for the pair, forced to downplay and hide what was obviously between them. When the truck trundled to a stop again, Renly whispered something to Loras that made the other man smile happily, and then gesture for Renly to go ahead of him. _Always the dutiful support driver_, Brienne thought. 

At weigh-in, Drogo stood near her and joked about them weighing the same, but it didn't feel mocking so she smiled a little and the two of them exited at the same time. Outside they met up with Podrick and Drogo's engineer, Cohollo, a squat, bald man who had a mouth full of bad teeth when he talked, and the four of them walked together back to their garages at the end of the lane. 

“Good racing,” Drogo wished her as he and Cohollo peeled off to the Dothrak garage and she and Pod continued to theirs. 

“You too,” she called back. 

Jaime was beaming at her from the pit lane. “You made a racing friend! With the very serious Dothrak team! I'm proud of you.” 

“You're a pain,” she said, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling. 

“How'd you do it? Compliment his manliness? Insult it? Some men like that.”

“I insulted Euron's, actually.” 

Jaime laughed, a high, sharp bark of delight. “Even better.”

The fourth week in, she was already starting to settle into the routine that was emerging from what looked like pure chaos on the outside. In many ways, race day was as structured as a schoolkid's schedule. After parade and weigh-in, there was final strategy review and getting the car out to the grid. Then she would take her last drinks of nutrient-infused water as she centered herself, mentally going one-by-one through the turns she'd spent all week planning for. The thirty-second warning would buzz and she'd be back in the car, her team yanking off the tire covers and then patting her on the helmet before scurrying away. Jaime would talk to her during her formation lap, something easy and distracting as she wove back and forth, getting a feel of the track and the car and herself. Then, sooner than she expected each time, she was back at her starting position and the lights were moving like mud in winter, and then the world held its breath. 

The moment when all five lights were burning, when the engines were snarling waiting to be released, was her favorite of the whole race. There was nothing like the gut-churning anticipation, the entire race waiting before them, all the planning and studying and media work left behind in the paddock where she wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. It would be easy to get addicted to that moment, to try to live in the space where everything was possible and nothing had yet been done. 

But there was still an entire race to be run and when the lights went out in Braavos, she was more ready for that race than she'd been in her life. 

She blew past Euron even sooner than she'd hoped, leaving him behind two laps in and not seeing him again for the rest of the drive. Ten laps later, Hyle was in front of her. As she edged past him with a late brake on the parabolica, she felt a twinge for a moment; not of reluctance, but sympathy. Jaime had been right: she couldn't afford to think of any of them as anything but competitors when they were out on the asphalt. 

Brienne had no hesitation at all using her DRS to sail past Ramsay with eight laps left in the race. When she'd put some distance between herself and Bolton she re-focused. 

“Who's next?” she asked. 

There was a beat and then Jaime said: “Lancel.” 

Ahead of her, like Jaime's name had summoned him, Lancel's red car shimmered into view before disappearing again as he took the next curve. 

“What's my time?”

“You're running point-three faster per lap.” 

“That's not enough to catch him, is it?”

“No. He's five seconds ahead.”

She shifted gears and urged her car faster. “Then I better get to work.”

When Brienne had been younger, she'd tried once to engage some of her classmates with Formula 1, to try to explain what she found so thrilling about it in the hopes she'd find someone to share her joy. 

“It's just cars driving in circles over and over,” one of the girls had sniffed, and the others had readily agreed, unwilling to listen. 

She'd been too young and shy then to try to push back, to make them see that every lap was a drama worthy of its own movie; each curve was the collision of skill and luck. Her fingers slid on the steering wheel as she took a sharp esse and Brienne inhaled, forcing her weakening hands to hold on. She was dehydrated and sweating precious fluid, but there was no stopping now. Lancel was a second ahead of her and there was only one lap left to go. 

“Half a lap,” Jaime said, his voice quiet but urgent. 

Lancel's car braked hard on the next curve and she braked a tenth of a second later, but it wasn't enough, there wasn't enough time left and she could see the checkered flag in the distance. She surged one last time but Lancel was already crossing the finish line and she thundered past slightly less than a second later. 

“Holy shit, Wrench,” Jaime said in her ear, laughing gaily, “you got points.”

“What?” She blinked away the intense focus that had consumed her in the last few laps, slowed her car and her thoughts, and gave a thumbs-up to a small group of fans waving blue flags with her logo on them. 

“You got P-8! Your first points!”

Brienne followed Lancel into the parc fermé, still in disbelief. But there was a herd of media already waiting and when she shut her engine off and pulled herself out of the cockpit she heard them shouting her name even through the helmet. Without thinking she counted the cars ahead of her, found it to be true. Eighth. 

Brienne pulled off her helmet and looked around for Jaime, saw a flash of golden hair as he shoved his way through the reporters. Arya shimmied through first using her smaller size and she leapt up and Brienne caught her on instinct, hugging the smaller woman hard before setting her back down. Then Podrick was there, grinning like she'd won the race instead of placing eighth, wrapping himself around her body and trapping her arms against her sides as he hugged her, nearly lifting her feet off the ground in his enthusiasm. She laughed, and kept laughing when Bronn and Addam and Ygritte and the others all swarmed around and they celebrated there amongst the cars over four points and hope.

* * *

They were the last team at the track that evening. Most of that was due to the media, who stopped her every three feet to shove a recording device in her face and ask her, “How does it feel to get your first points ever?” 

“It feels good,” she said every time before adding: “But it's just the beginning.” 

There was a lengthy and sometimes raucous debrief once they made it safely to the paddock, and then Petyr Baelish came calling with FIA crews to document the moment as well. The sun was low on the horizon once almost everyone else had left them alone, and by then Bronn or Asha – Brienne wasn't entirely sure who – had procured several six packs of local Braavosi beer so they hung around for another hour. 

Which was why – as they walked in a strung out line to their bus back to the hotel, Jaime up front with Addam and Arya and Garlan, Brienne at the back with Willem, Podrick, and Bronn – movement and muted laughter a bit away and behind them drew her attention. She stilled at the familiar sound of it, and her companions took a few more steps before stopping, too. 

“What is it, Chief?” Bronn asked, curious. 

Brienne turned on her heel and scanned the mostly darkened paddocks and mobile garages, until she saw three men sauntering out of the Lannister Corp garage towards the exit, their laughter loose and uncaring as they talked. She'd recognize those three men anywhere; she'd nearly gotten in a fistfight with them outside of the Lannister Corp offices a year ago. Lancel's crewmen hadn't been involved in anything untoward as far as Peck had been able to tell, but seeing Martyn Lannister back at the tracks, a free man even after he'd nearly killed Jaime and injured her, was too much to bear. 

“What the fuck is _he_ doing here?” Brienne seethed, striding off towards Martyn borne by a swift, boiling rage. 

“Uh, Chief?” she heard Bronn say, and then she was too far away from them for it to matter. 

“Hey!” she shouted to Martyn and his friends, willing them to stop. Her hands clenched and tensed at her side. 

They halted, and when Martyn turned there was enough light that he could see the fury in her face, and she could see the fear in his. 

“I'm allowed to visit the track,” Martyn said, holding his hands up as she surged nearer, but he could have been swearing he'd shower her in trophies and she still wouldn't have bothered to listen. All she could see was Jaime's car smashed against the walls of Harrenhal, hear him sobbing in the hospital. Brienne kept moving until she was near enough, and she punched Martyn hard in the jaw. 

The crack of it echoed like a whip off the nearby metal walls and Martyn went careening to the ground with a yell, his arms and legs flailing, an arc of blood catching the light. His friends just stared at her, frozen in place. 

Brienne bent down and grabbed Martyn's shirt, shook him until his dazed eyes blearily focused on her. “That's for Jaime,” she hissed and then, even though her knuckles were already aching, she reared back and punched him again, this time connecting with his nose. Over his choked scream she said, “That's for me,” before dropping him to the ground. 

She waited for the other two to jump her, but there were pounding footsteps and Bronn, Podrick, and Willem were at her side, covering her back, and Lancel's crew blanched and reached for Martyn as he lay groaning on the concrete. 

Willem pushed past her and stood in-between the two of them, looking back and forth between his twin and Brienne. 

“She assaulted me!” Martyn gasped as blood poured over his lips. “I'll have her arrested!”

“I don't think you will,” Willem said. “You're lucky you're not in jail yourself for what you did.”

They had never told anyone outside of the initial group the extent of what had happened, but the media had sniffed out enough to know Martyn Lannister's hands were dirty by association in Jaime's crash – and Hoat had been more than happy to corroborate it. She'd never talked about it with Willem and assumed Jaime hadn't either; Willem had always been a different and better man away from his brother's influence and she had trusted that in him when he'd joined her team. 

She was relieved to see her trust had not been misplaced. 

Martyn gaped at his brother, his mouth opening and closing before he spit out the blood and pressed his hand to his nose. “You'll all go down for this,” he seethed, his voice thick from the struggle of speaking with his injury. 

“For what?” Bronn asked, his arms folded casually over his chest. “You getting your ass kicked by a girl?”

Brienne grimaced a little even though she knew phrasing it that way would work better on Martyn. 

“She attacked me for-”

“If you say for no reason, I'll hit you again,” she cut him off. The pure, unbridled fury had faded and her hand was throbbing painfully, but the desire for violence was still there, simmering below her skin. Brienne had never thought herself a violent person, but she'd never had someone she loved so much be so hurt by someone who was so unrepentant about it. 

“Are we interrupting something?” Jaime asked from behind her and she glanced over her shoulder to find he and the rest of the crew had heard the noise and come investigating themselves. Jaime glanced at Brienne before his gaze traveled down to her hand and his eyes widened a little. She looked down, too, and saw blood dripping from split knuckles. “Are you okay?” he asked her. 

“Is _she_ okay?” spluttered Baldy, supporting Martyn as he started to slump, his own adrenaline apparently fading, too. 

“Shut up,” Jaime sighed, and Baldy glared at him but did as he was told. Jaime walked purposefully to Martyn, who shrunk back into his companion's grip. Jaime looked Martyn up and down, tilted his head to examine the blood still dribbling from Martyn's nose and mouth, the bruise already starting to purple on Martyn's jaw, and he smiled. “I didn't get to do it, but it does still feel really fucking good.” 

Jaime turned his back on Martyn and gently took Brienne's hand, his fingers skimming tenderly over the skin as he examined it. She winced a little. Nothing was broken, but she was glad it was two weeks until the next race. “_Are_ you okay?” he asked her quietly and she nodded, glancing past him to find Martyn being led away by his friends in silence as though they were trying to disappear without anyone noticing. 

“Martyn,” Jaime called out in a low, serious voice, not even looking at the other man, “if I ever see you at the track again I'll beat your fucking head in myself.” She watched what blood was left in Martyn's face drain away and the three men quickly shuffled off. 

Jaime gently kissed Brienne's wounds and then smiled at her. “Let's get you patched up.”

* * *

The next morning, Jaime woke to a text from Cersei: 'Are you still in Braavos? Need to talk to you alone.'

He was frowning at it as Brienne finished getting dressed. It had taken her a little longer than usual with her right hand swathed in a white bandage. He'd teased her about it earlier when she'd grumbled about having to use her left hand to brush her teeth and her embarrassed blush had been astonishingly red. 

“What's the schedule for this morning?” he asked as Brienne finished tugging her belt in place. 

“We're meeting the others for breakfast, then we're going to help break down the mobile garage. We have a flight out this afternoon. Why?”

“Cersei wants to talk.”

“Oh.” 

As far as Jaime knew, the last time Brienne and Cersei had been in a room together was when they'd both visited him at the hospital at the same time. Since then neither had seemed interested in connecting with the other woman, and Jaime had no interest in inviting trouble. Cersei was a wildcard whose guiding light was always herself, and he didn't understand her the way he had in his youth, when they'd still been twins and not just siblings. 

“You can invite her to the garage,” Brienne offered. 

“She wants to meet up alone. Which means it's probably about our family. Martyn, most likely.” 

“You should go see her then, don't you think?”

Jaime sighed. “I suppose.”

“She is your twin sister.”

“She is. She's also just as likely to ambush me with our father.” 

“It can't hurt to talk to her. See how much she knows. What her thoughts on it are.” It could hurt quite a lot, Brienne just didn't know that because they'd only met a couple of times and Brienne always tried to believe the best in people even when they had in no way earned it. Of course, he'd benefitted from that himself, so it seemed especially ungrateful to complain now. 

Jaime would have sworn that Brienne would have given even Martyn another chance, or at the very least ignored him. But Bronn had said as soon as she'd seen him she'd turned into the Warrior burning with vengeance, that they'd heard her tell Martyn “that's for Jaime.” Jaime had been too overwhelmed to fully comprehend it, his heart an expansive ache. There had been no one in his life who had fought as hard on his behalf as Brienne, and every time he looked at her all he could see were all the ways she had stepped in to defend him from the first. All the ways he wished he could protect her in return. 

He took Brienne's bandaged hand and kissed her tender knuckles again, as he'd done countless times since last night. “Ready to go get some breakfast, my hero?” 

Brienne groaned and tugged her hand away. “I told you to stop calling me that.” 

“Stop fighting people on my behalf, then.” 

She blushed and couldn't even meet his eyes and he marveled that the shy maiden was still there in the body of this strong, ever-more-confident woman he loved so much. 

“At least don't do it in public,” she insisted and he nodded gamely. 

“As you wish.” 

Brienne sighed and shook her head a little but she was smiling, the gentle, sweet curl of her lips that she saved for him, and he thought maybe if he couldn't protect her, this could be enough.

* * *

Jaime met Cersei at a coffee shop near the hotel where she was staying with the rest of the Stag Motors team. She was already there in a private booth near the back when he came in. 

She looked as she always did: perfectly coifed, elegantly dressed, and vaguely bored with the world. But when she saw him, a very real worry lit her eyes that were as familiar to him as looking in the mirror. It had been months since they'd seen each other: briefly back in December when he'd been in King's Landing and she'd looked at his stump with such intense pity he'd left their lunch as soon as he could. They texted only occasionally; since racing had consumed his life and Cersei had felt he'd abandoned her there had never been much to say. 

Cersei didn't stand to greet him so he got in line to order a tea and brought it with him to the booth a few minutes later. 

“Hello, Jaime,” she said as he slid into the seat, the steeping tea steaming between them. She had a barely picked over scone in front of her and a cup of dark coffee. 

“It's good to see you, sister,” he said, aiming for somewhere near the politeness Brienne would manage. 

Her gaze strayed to his prosthetic hand, took in the white and black fiberglass and metal and then back to his face. “You look well,” she said and she sounded like she meant it. 

“I am. You look worried. What's our father done?” 

Cersei frowned, but her eyes flicked down and away and he knew he was on the right track. “Why do you think this is about Father?”

“Why else would you contact me?”

“It's been awhile since we've talked,” she said and Jaime snorted. “Fine, it's about Father.” 

“That's better. Was this his idea, or yours?”

“Mine.” She met his stare with her own and he was surprised by the anxiety that tightened her face, that made the lines she worked so hard to hide tremble in her brow. “It's actually about the family. Things are so much worse than you know, Jaime.” Cersei leaned towards him and her breath puffed the steam off their drinks. “The family fortune is gone,” she whispered urgently. “The Lannisters are in terrible debt. Father confided in me last night.”

Jaime picked up his tea and blew on it. “I already knew that,” he said before he took a sip. It burned his tongue, the back of his throat, but Cersei looked like he'd burned her with how she recoiled back in the booth.

“You _knew_? And you didn't tell me?”

“You're a Baratheon now,” he said defensively, “what does it matter what happens to the Lannister fortune?”

“I'm a Lannister first and always,” she said. Her voice was fierce. “And so are you, no matter how much you want to forget it.” 

“If only I could.”

“Father's right, you know: you've never been grateful for what he and the family did for you.” 

Jaime's fingers clenched around the mug. “What exactly did he – did any of you – do for me except abandon me when I needed you?”

“Abandon you? All anyone did for the first seventeen years of our lives is give you everything you ever wanted: lessons, competitions, tutors so you wouldn't fail at school during the season. All we talked about was racing. We scheduled every part of our lives around you. Do you remember what father said after mother died? He worried how it would affect your ability to compete. Our mother was dead and all he cared about was you.”

“He didn't care about _me_,” Jaime said, his voice hoarse. He remembered those dark days too well; Tywin had worried about Jaime's karting, but mostly because he didn't want Jaime to have to forfeit all the money and time they'd put in already, hadn't wanted it to reflect badly on the Lannister name. Jaime had been seven and grieving and his father had only cared about the legacy. “The racing and the scheduling and the time – that was all for _him_. All he cares about is the Lannister legacy and what we do to it.”

“Poor you, having to carry that legacy when there are so many of us who would have happily done it if he'd just asked.” 

“You can have it,” Jaime said, waving his hand expansively. “All of it!”

“So generous to give it up just as it's crumbling down. This is your fault, you know, if you hadn't forced father to give up the LST-”

“Stop,” Jaime said, quiet but firm, and miraculously she listened. “Did he also tell you that he used Martyn to bet a huge sum of money the company didn't have that I would lose last year?” Cersei's eyes widened in answer. “Or that when I insisted on continuing to win, he took matters into his own hands?”

“Hoat caused the accident. Father trusted Martyn and Martyn betrayed all of you.”

Jaime chuckled darkly. “When in our lives has father once trusted any of us enough to not double-check everything? He arranged the gambling, he asked Martyn to sabotage me, and when Martyn went too far – but not quite far enough – Father stepped in himself with Hoat.”

“But...” Cersei's mouth worked in disbelief. “But _why_? You're his son. The golden boy.”

“Nothing is more important to Tywin Lannister than the family legacy. My golden status has been tarnished for a long time; ever since I picked Dragonfire over him. It was an easy trade to make.”

Cersei shook her head. “No, that can't be true.” 

Jaime waved his prosthesis in front of her and she winced. “I have very compelling proof, dear sister.” 

“You just...feel sorry for yourself. I saw you in the hospital. You were a mess.” 

“I was. I still am, I suppose, in my own way. But not because of this. I feel like the luckiest bastard in the world.”

“Because of her,” Cersei said, her tone low. 

“Yes. Of course I'd still rather have my hand. Of course I'd rather still be racing, to have gotten to hold the championship trophy. But if I had, I wouldn't have been as happy as I am now.” He'd had this conversation with Sam once, when he'd been feeling particularly full of self-pity over his inability to do anything. Before he'd gotten his new prosthesis and the season with Evenstar had started, when he and Brienne were still in that dancing-around-each-other stage. Sam had asked him to really think about what his life would have been like if the accident at Harrenhal had never happened, if he'd won that race and gone on to keep winning. His father would still have hated him, but likely so would Brienne, and he'd probably have hated himself, too, for having driven her away. He might have driven all of them away in his anger; not just her, but Addam and Bronn and Podrick and the rest. There was no telling for sure if he and Brienne could have gotten through what it would have taken emotionally to win the season, but Jaime felt certain it would not have been like this. He'd have lost something more fundamental than his hand and he wouldn't have even known it. 

“What is it about that woman that you love?” Cersei asked, a bittersweet mix of disbelief and genuine curiosity. 

Jaime pulled the tea bag out with his prosthetic hand, set it on the saucer and watched the water leak out of it as he pressed down with his fingers. He couldn't feel the heat. He looked back up at Cersei. “Everything,” he said. 

“Is that why you took Lannister Corp's LST? Because of what Father did?”

“Yes.” Jaime searched Cersei's familiar face. It had been so long since they'd really seen each other; he'd forgotten how similar they were. They'd been so close once, when they were younger. 

“This is all just...revenge?” The sneering disdain was familiar, too, but that had always been uniquely hers. “Seems a pitiful way to get back at him. You're still a Lannister; I expected better of you.” 

“You have no idea what I'm going to do,” he said sharply, and when her eyes narrowed he felt a slow, curling worry in his stomach. Cersei wasn't an idiot either. He'd need to be more careful. “Is this why you contacted me, so you could tell me about the empty Lannister fortune?” 

Cersei was still looking at him like he was a particularly troublesome puzzle. “Yes. I wanted to know what you were going to do about it. But you seem to have disowned the family entirely.” 

“I'm not the first Lannister to do that.” 

“Uncle Gerion was an adventure-chasing fool who's probably dead in the Smoking Sea. He's no role model.” 

“Ah, I see: the only good Lannisters are loyal Lannisters. You sound just like Father.” 

“You always were more mother's child,” she said. She didn't mean it as a compliment. Cersei slid elegantly out of the booth and Jaime grabbed her wrist with his prosthetic hand, saw her flinch at the touch. As far apart as they'd grown, she was still his twin. He couldn't just let her go and tie herself to their terrible father without some warning. 

“Can you just leave Lannister Corp alone? Help your husband's team for once. Try to embrace the family you chose.” 

Her red lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Is that what you think happened? You think I picked Robert Baratheon because I loved him and wanted to join his family?”

“I don't know what you were thinking. I don't know you.” 

“That's not my fault,” she hissed, and then she was gone. 

Jaime sat at the booth until his tea went cold, until his phone dinged with a message from Brienne asking where he was. He exhaled and sent a response saying he was on his way before he climbed slowly out of the booth. All he could do now was trust that Cersei wouldn't see more into his words than he wanted; and be even more vigilant watching out for Brienne. 

He didn't know if he was capable of either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have stolen the Titan of Braavos thing a little from Gwen, Daniel, and Nik's commentary for "The House of Black and White" ep of Game of Thrones. 😁


	36. May (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lancel was in front of her again, three seconds this time, an almost impossible distance to cover in the ten laps they had left. Brienne pushed on anyway, determined. The strategy they'd devised – the one Jaime had traced into her skin with his fingers and then with his tongue last night – had worked perfectly and Brienne was in P-6. But if they were ever going to catch up to Lannister Corp in points, she couldn't let Lancel keep beating her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My gratitude and love, as always, to Brynn.

**Lannister Corp Racing: 32 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 4 pts**

Lancel was in front of her again, three seconds this time, an almost impossible distance to cover in the ten laps they had left. Brienne pushed on anyway, determined. The strategy they'd devised – the one Jaime had traced into her skin with his fingers and then with his tongue last night – had worked perfectly and Brienne was in P-6. But if they were ever going to catch up to Lannister Corp in points, she couldn't let Lancel keep beating her. 

She'd been ahead of him midway through the race until she'd boxed. The pit stop itself had gone fine, but after they'd released her and she was accelerating back down the lane, Griffin had let Connington out just ahead of her, so close she'd had to abruptly brake and swerve near the wall, her tires brushing the edge, to avoid hitting him. 

“What the hell?” she'd said over the radio; Jaime's curse had been much longer and more inventive. 

The delay getting her speed back up had been enough to put Lancel too far ahead of her to catch up, although she'd enjoyed cutting Connington off and overtaking him just three turns after they exited the pit. 

Now she was speeding towards the checkered flag, thrilled to have gotten to P-6 and frustrated to yet again be held back from an even better position by an external force. 

Jaime whooped excitedly when she crossed the finish line. “Eight more points, Wrench! Awesome job!” 

“Thank you to the team,” she said, trying to hold onto the excitement over the annoyance. It lasted just long enough for her to start her cooldown lap. “Did they penalize Griffin for that pit release?” 

“No,” Jaime said, a single sharp word that relayed everything he felt about that state of affairs. 

“Why not?”

“They reviewed and ruled it was accidental.”

Brienne huffed loudly and pulled into the parc fermé. “P-6, though,” she said after she shut the car off and unhooked her steering wheel. When she stood she spotted Jaime immediately, hovering at the cordoned off edge, his headset still on. 

“You did great,” he said, and it was strange to be able to see the pleasure on his face even as the warmth in his voice rolled through her. “You should be proud of yourself. Now come over here so I can kiss you.” 

She flushed red in her helmet and flipped up her visor so he could see her glaring at him. Jaime laughed in delight and she – barely – did not reward him with a response. 

In the post-race weigh-in room, Brienne stood with Drogo and Loras in line. Robb, Oberyn, and Renly had placed first through third and had gone through the cooldown room instead. Loras seemed a bit at loose ends without Renly to attach to, but she welcomed even a mildly friendly face at this point. As they were waiting for the judges to finish setting up, Connington and Euron came in. 

Brienne glared at Connington and he smirked when he caught her. 

“Typical woman driver,” he said to Euron, but raising his voice so the words easily carried, “can't figure out how to pull out of a parking space.” 

Euron laughed, obnoxious and far louder than normal, and it spread to his new teammate this season, Quellon Botley, as well as the Golden Company and Nightfort drivers. Viserys sneered from a distance away but the rest of the men there looked mostly bored by it, though Drogo tensed next to her. 

“What a dick,” he muttered. 

“Just ignore him. He just wants attention.” 

Loras tossed his long hair, sweeping the brown curls back from his face. She had no idea how he fit comfortably in his helmet with that hair, although the flattened, sweaty state of it suggested it wasn't easy. “Didn't you beat him anyway?” he asked in a disinterested voice. 

“She did,” Drogo supplied in a voice that spread through the whole space. “Twice now, right?”

Connington made a face at them but he turned his back on the three of them. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly. 

“I didn't do it for you. He's been awful for years,” Loras said airily, although there was a dark lining to the puffy clouds of his tone that suggested that before she'd come he'd been Connington's target more often than not. Given Loras' barely concealed feelings for Renly, she wasn't surprised. 

After weigh-in, the core Evenstar team gathered in the paddock for debrief, and as it slowly wound to an end Pia stood up and said, “Before we all break for the night, you remember we have the event, right?”

Jaime groaned – loudly – and Brienne blinked, trying to remember what event. Suddenly, last year's Eyrie experience came rushing back and she joined him. 

“None of that,” Pia said mildly, “you're going.” 

“Do we have to?” Jaime whined, and Brienne was grateful he did because she felt the same. 

“Yes. You two especially have to go,” she pointed at Jaime and Brienne both. “The rest of you have to at least make an appearance. There are some brands interested in sponsoring us, but they're curious about what kind of response the team will get in these sorts of situations. There's been a lot of positive but it's been majority women so far.” Pia smiled apologetically. “A lot of the sponsors don't care that much about female fans yet.”

“Our money's the same,” Brienne grumbled, and Jaime squeezed her knee in sympathy. 

“I look forward to the free drinks,” Bronn announced. “Do we have to dress up?”

“No, casual is fine. This is a very loose event. Autographs and photos are encouraged, but serious fraternizing with the fans is not.” She cast a glance at Addam, who clasped his hand to his chest in mock offense. Brienne smiled down at the tabletop; she was not the only person on Evenstar Racing who was popular with women. Jaime of course attracted his own salivating fanclub, but Addam – especially since he was single – had become a big hit on social media. Jaime loved to do searches for his name and read out the thirstiest messages while Addam buried his head in his hands. Brienne suspected he enjoyed it, though, since he never seemed eager to make Jaime stop. 

“Yeah, tall, red, and handsome,” Jaime said, grinning. “Don't want you to cause any panties to get wet or – what was that one the other day? About the size of your--”

“We get it,” Pia cut him off and Jaime just smirked. “Everybody goes and they behave themselves, alright?” They all nodded their heads and Pia smiled beatifically. The young woman was in many ways still an enigma to Brienne; relentlessly good at her job, loyal and hardworking, fairly quiet most of the time, but when called on could be a force of nature. Brienne liked her, even if they didn't know much about each other outside of racing. 

Released by Pia's signal, the group stood, chattering, and Brienne went to her and tapped her on the shoulder. “I never thanked you for how you handled the Viserys incident,” Brienne said and Pia waved her off. 

“That's my job, it was no trouble.” On Brienne's doubtful look she smiled ruefully. “It was a little trouble. You're welcome. _Please_ don't shove anyone else.” 

Brienne thought of Martyn; she'd been lucky it had just been crew there and no fans or reporters. Whatever he'd done and wherever he'd gone after he'd left the track, it was into welcomed silence and obscurity. “I promise,” Brienne said. _Starting now._

“And I promise this will be fun tonight,” Pia said as they followed the others out of the room towards the team bus. Sandor was leaning against the front of it glaring at everyone as they walked up.

“No,” he said when Pia started to talk to him and she cowered a little but folded her arms over her chest. 

“You're part of the team.”

“I'm no such fucking thing. I drive the bus. I drive the transport truck. Sometimes I drive the driver. That's it.” 

Pia looked at Brienne, her eyes wide and pleading. “Don't you think Sandor should join us at the Eyrie party?” 

If the weight of Sandor's disgust at the very idea had been a physical thing, Brienne would have been crushed beneath it in a second, like a mountain falling on her head. “You're sure you don't want to go?” she tried anyway. “There's all the free food you can eat and alcohol you can drink. And I'm sure Pia will let _you_ fraternize with the fans.” 

“Unfair,” Addam squawked as he climbed up on the bus. Jaime shoved him lightly in the back to keep him moving. 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at her. “I don't want any photos. No interviews. And if any of the other drivers or crews so much as fucking touches me, I'm gone.” 

“We'll secure you a spot by the bar and surround you with a chair barrier,” Brienne assured him. 

He grunted. “I'm gonna regret this.”

“I'll be happy to have you there.” She patted him lightly on the forearm and he glanced down at her hand and then back up at her face and shrugged. 

“Whatever.” But he seemed less aggressively tense and she followed a triumphantly smiling Pia onto the bus. 

Once they'd sat next to each other, Pia leaned towards her. “He actually likes you,” she said, sounding impressed. “I thought he didn't like anyone.” 

They watched him get into the driver's seat as the last crew settled in the back of the bus, and he met Brienne's eyes in the mirror and gave her a sour look. 

“He does,” she agreed, thinking of how he'd taken her drinking the day she'd broken up with Jaime. “But how can you tell?” 

“He's going to the party just because you asked him. Plus he let you touch his arm and he didn't flinch.” She smiled at Brienne. 

“I like him, too,” she said. She did, even in all his gruff distance. Maybe because of it. She had no idea how he'd gotten scarred, and neither did Jaime from the time she'd asked, but she knew what it was like to be too big and too ugly for others to treat normally. If Brienne had to guess, their shared problems were what made Sandor even give her a chance. 

“Try not to leave him alone too long at the party, though. I worry about the kind of trouble he can get into in that group.” 

“We'll take turns keeping an eye on him. He likes Bronn and Podrick, too. Or at least he tolerates them. Is Peck going to be there?” 

“Yeah,” Pia said, smiling happily. “He wasn't able to fly in until late last night because he's been doing an in-depth piece on Direwolf, I've hardly seen him since last weekend.” 

“You don't have to stay tonight if you don't want to.” 

Pia arched one eyebrow. “I'm not leaving early so you can leave early.” 

“Am I that obvious?” Brienne asked, laughing a little. 

“It'll be fine. You might get a little swamped at first, depending on who's there, but I'll be looking out for you when you arrive. Between Jaime and I, we can filter people to you.” 

“What if they say something rude?” Brienne asked, staring at her hands clasped in her lap. Pia touched her fingers lightly to Brienne's wrist. 

“We'll deal with that, too. I'm sure everyone will be well-behaved. You know how it is: people are a lot more likely to be mean from a distance, like from the grandstand or over the internet. Face-to-face, in a party atmosphere? They'll lose their nerve.” 

Brienne hoped she was right.

* * *

The team arrived at High Hall together – except for Pia who'd gone early to scout ahead – for the annual Eyrie Amber Lounge party. It looked as Jaime remembered from last time: floor-to-ceiling windows, rotating rainbows of lights, too many people all trying to rub elbows with F1's elite. Or at least the elite that bothered to show. As they entered surrounded by their crew, he didn't see any of Direwolf in attendance, although Oberyn was holding court with a small legion of eager fans not too far from the entrance. 

At Jaime's side, Brienne stood tall and tense, a robot walking stiffly forward and he squeezed her hand until she looked over at him. “Breathe,” he reminded her and she jerked a nod. 

“I feel underdressed,” she said quietly, looking around. She looked amazing to him: a modern pair of tight jeans that gripped the muscles of her thighs and calves in a way he'd like to, a black Evenstar Racing tank-top with one of his light blue shirts unbuttoned over top of it. Her sleeves were rolled up so he could see her forearms flex with every nervous movement of her hands. Jaime had dressed to match her: blue jeans, a white Evenstar t-shirt half-tucked in, nothing over top since he knew it would be hot in here with the crowd. 

“Brienne Tarth is here!” someone shouted and the wall of the Evenstar crew ahead of them retreated a few steps backward as the crowd turned their way, before re-forming to protect her. Pia snuck between Bronn and Pod and grabbed Brienne's other hand. 

“This way,” she said, tugging them to a cleared area to the side where interested autograph- and photo-seekers could be funneled. 

“This feels busy,” Brienne said, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

“They sold out so fast they opened up the tickets to more. We're right at room capacity.” Pia stood on her tiptoes to look around and huffed. “We're probably over, honestly. Here's how it's going to go: you and Jaime are going to do fan interaction for an hour and then we're going to call it for the whole night. So just hang in there for an hour okay?”

The first fan came up, flailing her arms and cutting off Brienne's ability to protest even if she'd wanted to. Jaime didn't think she would have fought back too hard, especially as the first three rows of waiting fans were all women and while a few were looking at him, they were mostly staring starry-eyed at Brienne. 

He hovered behind her as she talked to every one, asking their names, signing whatever they put in front of her. Brienne's signature started out careful and neat but as the hour progressed Jaime watched it get loopier and messier until she'd hit a rhythm and he smirked. 

“That's your new signature,” he said when she took a break to down an entire glass of water. 

“What do you mean?”

“Your hand knows the routine now, it'll never be neat again. Trust me.”

She sighed and looked down at her hand with such woe that he kissed her on the cheek, and the next women in line squealed. 

“Hi,” Brienne said shyly when they stepped forward. Her cheeks were pink in the changing lights. 

It went on like that for the whole hour with barely a pause, Brienne unfolding a little more with each excited fan, like a flower exposing its precious petals to the sun. Jaime kept an eye on the men in line, wary of their reasons for being there, but they all looked as excited as the women did and a few even looked at Brienne with an appreciation Jaime knew all too well. After a photo with one teenage boy, where she'd given him a hug afterward, Jaime had slapped the poor kid on the back in solidarity for how shellshocked he'd looked being wrapped in her muscular but gentle arms. 

Finally he saw Pia at the back of the short remaining line, saw her talk to a couple of well-dressed older folks who walked up looking like they were realizing someone important was here but they weren't sure who, and then they left and Pia nodded at Jaime. He nudged Brienne and whispered, “Last few signatures and you're done,” and she bulled through with renewed enthusiasm. 

When the last fan had departed with a satisfied smile, Pia patted Brienne on her sloping shoulders. “You did _great_,” she beamed. “The sponsors even came to talk to me. It's looking good, they'll be in touch in a couple of days.”

Jaime wrapped his arm around Brienne's waist, and she slid hers around him. “We're going to go partake of the free food and alcohol that was promised,” he told Pia, who waved them on with a smile. 

“What about race diet?” Brienne asked as they maneuvered through the crowds, the pair of them wide enough to command their own path. 

“Screw the race diet for one night. You placed sixth, you made a bunch of fans happy, and you got us a new sponsor. Live a little.” 

“I guess you're right,” she murmured, though she sounded unconvinced. “How's Sandor doing?”

“The Hound has his own guard dogs tonight in the guise of Bronn and Arya.” 

She craned her neck around and Jaime could tell when she found the three of them because a short laugh escaped her. “Oh gods, that seems like a recipe for disaster.” 

“As long as no one disturbs them, they seem to be getting along swimmingly, but I wouldn't want to upset that very precarious balance.” He saw Addam waving at them from an empty table near one of the huge windows with the best view of the track and Jaime lifted his hand in acknowledgement. “Let's go get drinks and then we'll go keep Addam from getting too lonely.” 

On their way to the table with drinks in hand for themselves and Addam, a tall, attractive woman with waves of dark hair swooped in with open arms and yelled, “Brienne!” just before she wrapped Brienne in a huge hug. 

Jaime watched Brienne stop in shock, her arms held out to the sides and both hands full with their drinks. The other woman let her go and stepped back, smiling bright and wide. Brienne looked mostly surprised, though not unhappily. 

“Dacey,” Brienne gasped, “I didn't know you'd be here!”

The name was familiar. Jaime recalled Brienne mentioning her a handful of times – first after her ladies' night out event in Sunspear during winter testing, and again the couple of times the two women had run into each other at the tracks. Brienne had said she was tall, but Jaime was still surprised to see Dacey was almost his height. 

“I made Oberyn take me as his plus one,” Dacey said with an easy grin. “I thought you'd be here and we haven't talked in awhile.” She took one of the drinks and then looped her arm through Brienne's free one. Dacey paused to give Jaime an appraising once-over. “Jaime Lannister,” she said. “I'm Dacey Mormont.” 

His hand was full so he just nodded in return. “Nice to meet you. Brienne's told me a lot about you.” 

“Brienne has told me almost nothing about you but mostly that's because she gets all tongue-tied and embarrassed when you come up. Oh, see, like that,” Dacey said, pointing at the red rushing like spilled paint down Brienne's thickly muscled neck. He and Dacey shared knowing smiles. “I don't know what you do to our lovely Brienne here, but she likes you a lot.” 

“I like her a lot, too, so that works out,” he said, cheerful. “Come with us, there's someone you should definitely meet.” 

As they walked to the table, Jaime saw Addam smooth back his hair and then rub his hand down his shirt to brush off any entirely nonexistent crumbs given there was no food in front of him. “Dacey, this is Brienne's racing coach and kind of the team co-principal at this point, Addam Marbrand.” He gestured at his friend. 

Dacey had extricated herself from Brienne and when Addam held out his hand to shake she took it, and Jaime had to swallow a laugh at the lingering grip between them. They were of a height, both lean and vibrant in the artistic lighting. 

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” Addam said in the suave, charming way he had. His smile was practiced but sincere. “Are you on one of the teams?”

“I'm on Oberyn's pit crew. I took over for Podrick when he abandoned us for Evenstar.” She smiled lightly at Brienne, softening her words, and Brienne bit her lip but smiled back. 

“Not sure we can let you sit with us, being from a rival crew and all.” 

“I feel like we're practically teammates,” Dacey protested with a teasing grin. “Your picture is still on the Sunspear walls.”

“You have me at a disadvantage. You know me, but I don't know anything about you.” 

“I'd be happy to share,” she said, touching his wrist. Jaime smirked and glanced at Brienne, who looked like she was watching a particularly interesting tennis match. Their own relationship had started off on a much rockier foot than this obvious attraction between Addam and Dacey, and given Brienne's history he imagined she hadn't engaged in this sort of easy flirting with a near-stranger ever in her life. Though to be honest, neither had he. He'd always saved his deepest adoration for racing, until Brienne. He'd have to flirt with her more to make up for it for both of them. 

_Truly a hardship_, he through wryly, just before capturing her hand to press a kiss to her fingertips. 

Addam and Dacey continued their back-and-forth on the other side of the table and Jaime traced the lines and scattered freckles along Brienne's jaw with his own fingertips, the blush following behind like his touch had drawn it out. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes darting around. The party was well underway, the patrons halfway to being drunk, the media hovering in other areas of the huge room. 

“Flirting with you.” 

“Isn't flirting less touching and more talking?”

He shrugged. “Semantics.” 

She snorted. “I don't think this is an issue of semantics, Jaime.” He brushed his index finger across her lower lip and he felt her sharp intake of breath, saw her pupils start to deepen. 

“Okay, that's probably not just flirting,” he admitted. At least it wouldn't be if he kept at it. He brought his hand back to the table. “How's your drink?”

“Mostly fruit. I'm not convinced the bartender put any alcohol in it.” 

“That won't do; do you want me to order you a shot of vodka?”

“Gods, no,” she laughed. “This is fine. It's probably a driver's special.” She took a drink and he watched her scanning the crowd, the expressive map of her eyes showing every reaction to the people she recognized. When they darkened in disgust, Jaime turned to follow her stare and saw Euron and Quellon surrounded by adoring women. 

“No accounting for taste,” Jaime said, but then the profile of a familiar proud nose made the liquid in his stomach curdle. 

Tywin Lannister stood at the room's entrance, his white hair so closely shaved he looked nearly bald, his face more lined than Jaime remembered. Kevan flanked him on one side, Lancel on the other, and a step behind, golden-maned and smug, was Cersei. His father was taking in everything before him like they'd all been placed there for his amusement and he found the whole thing utterly lacking. 

“Shit,” Jaime muttered. Brienne was rigid as a steel beam next to him. 

Tywin found them easily – they were two of the tallest people in the room, Jaime wasn't sure how they could be missed – and his face stilled, like a blizzard storming so hard the world turned blank. 

“Addam,” Jaime hissed, and his friend jerked his head around towards them. “Go with Dacey and ask Sandor to get the bus ready. Ask Pia to join us soon as she can.” 

Addam straightened but when he opened his mouth to ask, Jaime gestured towards Tywin with his chin, saw the second Addam recognized what was happening. “Got it,” Addam said instead of complaining, and he smiled charmingly at Dacey and held out his arm. “I could use some help rounding up our crew, care to join me?”

Dacey looked mystified as she took Addam's arm, but she let him lead her off towards the others. Facing Tywin alone with Brienne meant his father would be crueler than with an audience, but he didn't want to throw Addam or Dacey under the oncoming train just to save themselves a few bumps. 

“We should wait outside,” Brienne said. 

“No. He doesn't attend these things, he's here for a reason.” And so was Cersei, though for what reason Jaime didn't want to imagine. “I want to see what he has to say.” 

By the time Tywin had stalked their way, Jaime was relaxing casually against the tall table, his prosthetic hand at the small of Brienne's back to steady them both. 

“I didn't think these parties were your scene, Father,” Jaime said in greeting. He ignored Kevan and Lancel and looked past Tywin to Cersei. “Sister. I'm surprised to see you again so soon.”

Her dark red lips thinned but she couldn't quite meet his eyes. A rock of unpleasant certainty settled in Jaime's stomach. 

“How dare you,” Tywin seethed and the skin on the back of Jaime's neck grew cold. His father had come looking for a fight, here out in the open instead of trying to hide it from the public's view. Which meant he was the angriest Jaime had ever seen him. 

There were reporters already starting to hang around, but Pia swooped in and started ushering them further away. 

“Don't worry, Father, this is only my first drink,” Jaime drawled, holding up his nearly empty glass and then downing the rest in two swallows. “I didn't even waste anything.” 

“We need to talk,” Tywin pressed on. “But not here, amongst all of these people.”

“Here works for me. I'm not going anywhere with you, unless you let me drive.” He waved his prosthetic at Tywin, heard the snap of shutters even from this distance and with pop music still reverberating out from the stage at the opposite end of the floor. 

“You don't want to have this conversation in public.” 

“No, _you_ don't want to. The worst of my life has been public consumption for decades. I'm used to it.” 

Tywin's jaw worked like a piston under his skin, but he came another step closer to the table and placed both of his palms flat atop it. Brienne tensed next to Jaime and he gently pressed his fingers more firmly into her back. This wasn't her fight, and he wouldn't let her step in front of his father on his behalf. 

“I know what you're up to,” Tywin said. 

“Do you?” Jaime looked past him to Cersei again and she had her arms elegantly crossed, her chin lifted, and a bitter triumph on her face. Jaime tried to keep a step ahead, tried to figure out why she was there, what she'd told her father, how much he knew. “I'd say I'm up to about six foot one, wouldn't you?”

“Do not fuck with me, Jaime,” Tywin ordered. Brienne's sharp intake of breath matched Jaime's own. There was a boiling rage beneath Tywin's ice, escaping in small, burning geysers. “I figured out your little game: you're trying to destroy the company.” 

There it was. What little hope Jaime had of holding Tywin off til at least mid-season evaporated. 

“I'm trying to destroy _you_,” Jaime freely admitted now, leaning into it like a sharp curve. Cersei shifted behind their father. “You only care about the company.” 

“I care about the family.” 

Jaime laughed, loud and brittle. “What am I, then? An acquaintance?”

Tywin's fingers curled into claws on the tabletop, the collapse of his icy facade imminent. “You might as well be for all you care about your family.” 

Without even looking at her, Jaime could feel Brienne readying to speak. He glanced over and shook his head the smallest amount. She frowned but he could feel her energy retreat and coil in her tense muscles. 

“I care about the family that treat me like a person and not a commodity,” Jaime said to his father. The cameras were going wild from where Pia continued to somehow hold them off, and Jaime wondered if Tywin had been right and they should have done this somewhere more privately. 

Tywin sneered. “You don't think your brother commodifies his relationship with you? You think he doesn't play it off that his brother is the infamous Jaime Lannister so he gets more drinks and more access and more women? That he doesn't use the bizarre love you have for him to turn others against me?”

“You do that just fine on your own,” Jaime ground out between clenched teeth. “Aunt Genna--” 

“Has betrayed this family as much as you. The only ones who are fighting for the Lannisters are Kevan and I.” Cersei stiffened but remained quiet. “The rest of you are happy to spend and squander our money, to put your own desires ahead of the family legacy. It's disgusting.” 

Jaime sighed and stared at his empty glass, wishing it would magically refill so he could drink some and throw the rest in Tywin's face. “Why did you come here?”

“To try to talk some sense into you.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a furious whisper. “I know you think your little toy car can compete, that your absurd choice of driver is going to win you races, but you're just embarrassing yourselves. You'll never beat us in a race, let alone the constructor championship. You don't have to drag the entire Lannister name down with you in your futile thrashing about.” 

Jaime slid his hand from Brienne and let it hang at his side, the fingers clenching as much as the prosthetic would let him. It would be a better club than a fist. “If you're so certain we won't beat you, why not just let me drown? Isn't that what you've always wanted?”

“I have never wanted you to be anything but the man you should have been.” 

“You mean you? Or just your puppet?” Jaime spit. “Either way, I'd rather be dead.” 

Tywin's eyes narrowed and the avalanche tumbled out, suffocating Jaime: “Seeing as you're crippled and delusional now, perhaps it would have been better if you were.” 

Brienne slammed her hand down on the table between them before Jaime could go completely under, and they all jerked backward in shock, even Tywin. Jaime's empty glass tipped over with a clank and rolled to the edge of the table, where it stopped. Their side of the room was utterly silent and frozen. 

“Get the fuck out of here,” Brienne seethed, each word as brutally delivered as if she'd swung at Tywin. 

“You cannot beat us,” Tywin repeated, his gaze as sharp and slicing as shards of jade. “You would both do well to give up now.” When Brienne's large hand curled into a fist between them, he shook his head and walked off, Kevan and Lancel following behind like eager puppies, although Lancel cast an unhappy frown back over his shoulder. 

Cersei remained, still haughty, still certain of her own choices, even after their father's latest display. 

“You too,” Brienne said, and Cersei planted her hands on her hips, narrowed her eyes. 

“You don't get to tell me what to do.” 

Jaime gathered himself, raised his voice over _would have been better if you were_ echoing down the long dark hall of his mind to ask Cersei: “What did you tell him?” 

“Just what you told me, dear brother: that you already knew about the money troubles and yet you were still out for revenge.” Jaime felt Brienne's gaze rest heavy on his face. Not mad, but wondering. “It wasn't hard to figure out from there. Absurd, of course, to think some upstart constructor could beat Lannister Corp even with just one driver. She must be downright magical in bed to get you to believe that.” 

“Shut up,” Jaime bit out. His anger flared like a torch in the darkness. Cersei smiled and tossed her hair and for the first time in their lives, he hated her. 

“Come on,” Brienne said, tugging his arm gently. “We can wait outside.”

But Jaime dug in. “I guess you really are a Lannister,” he said to Cersei. 

“I told you I was.” 

“He's not going to leave the company to you, no matter how much of your soul you sell off for him.”

“Fuck you, Jaime.” 

“Isn't that what you wanted? Or did you just want him to love you for once?” Cersei wasn't languid and triumphant now; she was rigid with fury, too; his twin again. “Why couldn't you just stay quiet?” he asked, unable to even raise his voice. 

“Because we're the heirs to the Lannister legacy. It's our duty.” 

“It's not our duty to keep shoveling the same shit our father did and calling it gold.”

Cersei came around the table, her hand stretched towards him and this time it was Jaime who flinched away. “We can save Lannister Corp,” she said, her hand falling to her side. “The public likes you now; you – and her, even – can come back and bring your money with you. We can shore up the foundations--”

“No.” He saw Addam waiting at the edge of the crowd, gesturing that they were ready to go. Behind Jaime, Brienne hovered near. “You picked your side, Cersei, and I picked mine. I left Lannister Corp with no regrets. We intend to break every last, rotten stick holding it up, and when all that's left is dust, the legacy of total failure is all yours.” 

He brushed past Cersei, Brienne on his heels, and they hurried for the exit. 

“Everything all right?” Addam asked.

“No,” Brienne said quietly, taking Jaime's hand. He gripped hers tightly and was grateful for her silence on the bus ride back to the hotel, the walk down the beige-carpeted hallway to their room. His father's voice would have been too loud to drown out with simple platitudes and he was too tired to try to act like he was okay. 

Brienne was still quiet as she helped him take his prosthetic off, set it in the case, massaged ointment and feeling back into the end of his stump. He felt the concern in her tender hands, but she felt very far away even though she was by his side. 

Then, with a gentle kiss to his temple, she left him sitting hunched on the bed. “I'm gonna get ready for bed,” she murmured. “Why don't you lie down and get some sleep?”

“Do you think he's always hated me this much?” Jaime asked, tracing the long scars at the end of his stump. Brienne stopped a few steps away. 

“I don't know,” she said, coming back to sit down next to him, the mattress sinking a little. Jaime leaned towards her warm strength. “I don't think he really believes that you should...that you should be dead.” 

“Life insurance.” On Brienne's frown Jaime smiled bitterly. “He would have had some on me, his _investment_, in case of my death. I would have been more valuable.”

“Not to me,” she said, and her voice was soft but so hoarse and ferocious Jaime looked up at her. She pressed her hand to his chest and he felt the heat of it unfreeze the ice inside of him, like a winter stream cracking open in the sunlight. His heart beat hard against his ribs, clamoring for her touch. “Or yourself. Your friends. The team. Don't listen to your father, Jaime. He's a monstrous person and he doesn't know your value at all.” She brushed her other hand through his hair, cupped his cheek with her palm. Jaime leaned into it, felt her energy buzzing through his body between the arc of her hands on him. “He doesn't know the man that I know.”

“Annoying?”

“Yes,” she said, and for a moment she looked amused before the fierce certainty was back, not letting him deflect away her burning light. “And driven by an incredible capacity for love. Smart and loyal and dedicated.”

“Are you sure we're talking about the same person?”

“I know who you are,” she said, solemn as a vow. 

As easily as that, he believed her, as he'd believed her that first day when she'd promised not to sabotage him. In all their time together she had only lied to him once, and even that had been mostly truth. There was no self-doubt strong enough to hold up under the flames of Brienne's profound belief in him. 

Spring bloomed in his uncovered heart, and he urgently wanted to soothe away her severe frown. “What about funny?” he offered, covering her hand with his. The pleasant riot of new life was spreading through him now, his fingers and toes waking up. 

“Sometimes,” she said, overly serious. But the lines on her forehead eased.

“Sexy?” he murmured and her cheeks pinked adorably. “I'll take that as a yes.” He kissed her, a tender press of their lips, and she slid the hand on his cheek into his hair, curling loosely. Jaime broke the kiss slowly, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Thank you,” he breathed. 

“I love you,” she said simply, as if those three words could so easily encompass all the ways she had ever been there for him, before she'd even liked him at all. 

Jaime closed his eyes and nuzzled his nose against hers, felt the puff of her breath on his face like a warm summer breeze. He was glad suddenly he hadn't brought the ring with him, or he would have asked her to marry him there no matter his good intentions to wait until the long season was done. There, on a mediocre hotel bed in a mediocre hotel with the ghost of his father still fading; she deserved better than that. “I love you, too,” he said instead, hoping she heard in his quiet vehemence everything he meant by it: _I love you_ and _thank you_; _you're wonderful_ and _I don't want to be here without you_. 

He kissed her again with all of those words jammed in his throat, and pressed her back into the bed with the weight of his feelings for her. Jaime explored her neck with his lips and tongue, the jumping muscles of her stomach with his fingers. He took his time undressing her, covering all the areas he unveiled with warm kisses as she undulated her hips under his, as she gasped above him when he drifted lower. Brienne was a shield and a sword, but she was also the woman he loved and he needed her to know all of it, hoped she could hear his appreciation in the stroke of his hand down her thigh, of his tongue at the pulse in her wrist. When she was needy and her fingers gripped tightly on his shoulders, he took his time still, making love to her with slow, rolling thrusts until he was sweating and trembling as he held on long enough to watch her come apart under him in a long, keening wave. Panting and clenching around him, Brienne pulled Jaime closer and whispered her love and he moved in time to her words until the sunlight burst bright behind his eyes, the heat poured through and out of him, and his admiration tumbled helplessly from his lips. 

They fell asleep tangled together and Jaime dreamed of the sun-kissed oceans of Tarth and didn't think of his father at all.


	37. May (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime had been right that much of successful driving wasn't about the mechanics of driving at all. She spent all week running the sim laps over and over, she got more repetitions during free practice, and the intricacies of up- and down-shifting had become second nature with time. Driving was about holding many things in her head at once: the wind, the weather, the state of her tires; who was nearby and what they were doing; track conditions and engine status; her own stamina and dehydration levels. Underpinning that was her positioning and braking and the angles of her approach. The act of driving hardly crossed her mind at all. 
> 
> But it was all she could think about when Jaime said “Two laps to go,” and she was still ahead of Lancel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI. I hope you all are well. We've crossed the 300k word line. Thanks for reading, as always. <3

**Lannister Corp Racing: 42 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 12 pts**

Oldtown had been built on huge blocks of stone, many of which still held up the bridges that criss-crossed the city. Tumbled piles of them stood in the last few undeveloped parts where the wall that used to surround the city center had been. Progress had not halted with stone, though; steel and glass and concrete were woven within and on top of the old bones. It was a remarkable mix of old and new, but no matter how big the skyscrapers or how impressive the old ruins, nothing compared to Hightower. 

The bottom was a pile of plain black rock, on top of which was a castle that turned into a soaring, stepped tower. The top, which used to provide light via an open bonfire, had been modernized into a lighthouse with a huge beam that spread out into Whispering Sound. It was rumored that if all other lights were out you could see it from Blackcrown and Three Towers. Brienne stood at the dock waiting to take the small tour boat over and stared at the tallest human structure in the world, her mouth open in shock. 

Jaime had control of the video this time and he did a slow pan up the tower and then over to Brienne. “Impressive, right?”

She nodded her head, a few wisps of hair falling loose from under her ridiculous sunhat. Even though it was spring, it was already humid in Oldtown, the sun relentless. Brienne had complained that sunscreen alone wouldn't protect her, especially if she just sweated it all off, so they'd bought the hat at the hotel gift shop, much to her chagrin. It didn't detract from the racerback tank top she wore, though, the back of which Jaime had probably focused on too much in the travelogue video, but he figured he was just giving the fans what they wanted. 

“What do you think Lord Hightower was compensating for?” Bronn asked thoughtfully offscreen and Jaime snorted. 

“You're banned from future travelogues,” he said, whirling to get Bronn, who rolled his eyes. 

“You can't do that, I'm a fan favorite.” 

“Podrick is a fan favorite, you're the old grump everyone puts up with.”

“I'm not old,” Bronn protested, and Jaime turned back to the tower. 

Brienne was still staring up at it, mesmerized. “It's enormous,” she said, shocked. And then she looked at Jaime and the camera trained back on her and she frowned. “Don't say it.”

“Say what?” Jaime asked innocently. Brienne tilted her head and gave him a dry look. “It's really a shame Addam isn't here to defend my honor.” 

Addam was off spending time with Dacey, who had also arrived that morning. Bronn had reported seeing Dacey leaving their hotel the morning after the party at High Hall, and when Jaime had teased Addam about his late night visitor, instead of boasting or joking, Addam had smiled kind of goofily and not said much. He'd caught Addam texting her repeatedly in the days since, and when Addam had looked longingly at his phone all morning as they worked together to set up the mobile garage and the car inside of it, Jaime had let him go early. 

Once their work had been completed, Jaime, Brienne, Pod, and Bronn had taken a cab down here to film their race week travelogue. 

“Addam would just make the joke and blame you instead,” Brienne said. 

“Probably,” Jaime admitted. 

They savored the tour, Jaime asking their charmingly eager guide, Garth, any number of questions to drag it out. He stopped recording halfway in, instead just watching Brienne intently listening to every one of Garth's breathlessly delivered factoids. Brienne, Jaime had discovered, loved historical facts. 

“Preparing to be a tour guide again if racing doesn't work out?” he asked her as they took the boat from Hightower back to the dock in the twilight. 

“No.” She rubbed her fingers over the perfectly lacquered railing. “The past is important to me.” 

“Why?”

“Because it shows what we can survive.” 

Jaime leaned his forearms on the rail and stared out into the night. The light of Hightower flashed around, a slow strobe calling some people home, warning others away. “Are you at least a little excited about the future?” he asked quietly. The light flashed white along the shore they were heading towards, and then it went dark again. 

“Parts of it,” she said, but she sounded cautious. 

“The parts with me?” He tried to keep his voice casual, but it felt weightier in the darkness. 

“Of course. Although...” 

Jaime held still, his body moving with the slow bounce of the boat on the water and little else. 

Brienne sighed quietly. “There are a lot of other things to get through first,” she said. 

The light flashed again; they were almost at the dock. “Before what?” 

“Before we know what our future's going to be,” she said, watching him steadily. The deep blue of twilight had escaped into her eyes, and he searched them for some clue to what she thought that might mean. He wanted to ask her, but this wasn't the time to push for an answer; and if that answer wasn't forever, he was in no way ready to know anyway. Jaime covered her hand with his and they were quiet as the boat docked with a slight thump. 

The next morning before free practice they were visited by a ghost of Formula 1's past when Arthur Dayne hovered at the open door to their garage. 

Brienne, Jaime, and Bronn were talking about a change they'd made to the weight balance of the car to make it a few ounces lighter, when Bronn stopped mid-sentence and yelled: “Dayne!” over the din of tools and someone's music. “What in the hells brings you here?”

Jaime turned on his heel, startled to see the man he'd idolized for all his life looking so uncomfortably human. 

“I hope I'm not interrupting anything,” Dayne said, and Brienne went to him first, shook his hand and ushered him in. 

“Of course not,” she said, “we're happy to have you visit.” She looked expectantly at Jaime, and he held out his left hand. Dayne glanced remorsefully at the prosthesis but shook Jaime's hand warmly. 

“Jaime,” he said, and his voice was deeper and more tired than Jaime had heard him last in a TV interview years ago. Though Dayne had retired before Jaime ever hit F1 as a cocky seventeen-year-old, they'd crossed paths several times when Jaime was in karting and the older man would come by to watch and advise the younger racers. Jaime's admiration had never been a secret, and he'd soaked up every single word Dayne had ever spared him. “It's good to see you.” 

“You too,” Jaime said. “What brings you here?”

“Well,” Dayne glanced at Brienne and Jaime recalled her saying they'd talked when he was in the hospital. Given the loaded look they exchanged, Jaime wondered now what exactly they had talked about. “I was hoping to steal some of your time, actually,” he said to Jaime. “I'd just like to talk to you for a bit, if you don't mind.” 

“I'll be fine with Addam for practice,” Brienne said quickly. “Take as much time as you need.” 

Jaime removed his headset and battery pack, set them down on the nearby counter and before he could walk off with Dayne, Brienne pulled him back and kissed him tenderly. He brushed her cheek with his knuckles and then set off through paddock with Dayne. There were cameras everywhere as they emerged out into the open area behind the paddocks and garages, where visitors and crew hurried in barely controlled chaos. 

Dayne smiled a little for all the photos and Jaime did his best to smile as well as they walked in silence. 

“I know this is a bit much,” Dayne said apologetically and Jaime shrugged. 

“We've had days like this ourselves.”

“Because of Brienne.” Jaime nodded. “Well, we're in luck today, at least. Oldtown is the closest thing I have to a home track and I know somewhere we can go where it will be quieter. Follow me.” 

Dayne led them through the throng, ignoring the media's calls to find out what they were up to, Jaime trying to keep from looking like the starstruck kid he felt like all over again. They went through the mobile IAF offices, where Dayne nodded in greeting at the receptionist, and then led Jaime through there, back out and up a flight of stairs to another building and a quiet hallway lined with doors. He scanned them and picked one marked VIP Suite 2 and ushered Jaime inside. It was an empty room with stadium seating, a bar stocked with food and drinks, and a whole wall of windows that overlooked the track. The first cars were just starting to pull out for practice session one. 

“They always keep this open for me,” Dayne said as he headed for the bar. “I usually try to sit in the Sunspear paddock, but sometimes I'll watch from here where I don't have cameras in my face the whole time. I do hate the constant attention. Drink?”

“Uh, yeah, whatever you're having.” 

Dayne smiled. “Bourbon sour it is.” As he started mixing the drinks, Jaime stared out at the track, saw the brilliant blue of Brienne's car driving down the out lane for her install lap. After a minute, Dayne came over with a drink and handed it to Jaime, clinked their glasses together. 

“Congratulations,” Dayne said. 

“For what?” Jaime took a swallow and tried not to make a face. Dayne had mixed it strong. 

He was staring out the window, though, and missed Jaime's battle with himself. “She's doing well so far.” 

“She is, but that's on her.” 

“It is, but I imagine you've helped her at least some. Unless she didn't help you last year?”

Trapped by the logic, Jaime huffed a laugh. “Thank you,” he said. “We're a good team.” 

“You are.” Dayne took a long drink and sighed. “I was really sorry to hear about what happened to you. I stopped by to talk to Brienne just after it happened.”

“She told me.”

“I'd hoped to talk to you, too, when you were ready.” 

Jaime sipped at his drink. He could barely see Brienne's car at curve 8. “She told me that, too.” 

He'd been so angry and lost in those weeks after the crash, even the idea of seeing Arthur Dayne had seemed like such an embarrassing act of pity that he never could have borne it. Then Peck had dropped his bombshell and Jaime hadn't had time to give Dayne a second thought. 

“I'd hoped to give you some advice, maybe share some wisdom. Nothing like an old, retired driver trying to act like a know-it-all,” Dayne said, tone thick with self-deprecation.

Jaime shrugged one shoulder. “I wouldn't have listened anyway.” 

“No, I suppose not. You always were so full of yourself.” 

Lifting one eyebrow, Jaime looked at Dayne. “Less of me to be full of now,” he said, waving his prosthetic a little. Dayne's easy smile slipped but he nodded. 

“I admire how well you've recovered. I didn't think I'd ever see you back at the track after that.”

“I didn't either, for a long time.” 

Dayne finished off his drink. “How did you manage it?” he asked, his voice urgent and probing, like the answer mattered deeply. 

_Brienne_, Jaime thought, but spiraling out from her was his therapy with Sam, his renewed friendship with Addam, his deeper understanding of Bronn, the easy camaraderie with the team, the thrill of the work itself. A spiderweb of connections and purpose he couldn't have possibly imagined in the darkest nights in the hospital. 

“I filled up the empty places with good things,” Jaime said, not sure how else to describe it. 

Dayne made a considering noise in his throat. “Is Brienne doing Grid Kids this weekend?”

“Yeah, she's really looking forward to it.” 

“Good. I asked Peckledon to make her Edric's driver.” 

Edric Dayne was Arthur's nephew, a young teenager who was on the cusp of making the jump to Formula 3 and, if his karting career was any indication, a swift move up to F2 after that. 

“She'll be honored,” Jaime said after finishing off his drink, too. 

“It's the boy who should be honored,” Dayne grinned. “It'll do him good to talk with her. He reminds me a bit too much of you when you were young.” 

Jaime snorted. “Even talking to Brienne wouldn't have helped me as a teenager.” 

“Let's hope my nephew is smarter than you, then. Another drink?”

“No, I can't afford to be drunk on the job.” 

“Tough boss?”

“The toughest.” 

Dayne laughed a little, but he went to mix himself another drink while Jaime watched the cars going through their practice runs. 

“I've been thinking about getting back into racing myself,” Dayne said once he'd re-stocked. Jaime looked over, surprised. Dayne's complete recusal from racing after his retirement was legendary.

“Why?”

Dayne was quiet for a long time as he watched the cars going around, taking slow swallows from his glass. Finally he gestured out the window as Brienne's car pulled back into the pit lane. “I have empty spaces to fill.” He inhaled deeply and turned to fully face Jaime. “Brienne told me I should have reached out to you after Aerys. Snapped at me, really. Pissed me off, for her to put that on me. But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since she said it. Damnable, really, how right she was.”

Jaime grinned a little. “I am very familiar with that feeling.” 

Dayne smiled, too. “I suppose you are.” His smile dropped and he looked suddenly the old man Jaime never saw him as, even now. In his mind Arthur Dayne was eternally the world champion at the peak of his career, but even Arthur Dayne couldn't outrace time. “I'm sorry I didn't do more, back then. For you. For Aerys. None of it ever felt like my problem, but I see now that I should have helped.” 

Jaime stared out at the empty track and nodded silently, swallowing hard. If Dayne – if anyone – had spoken up on Jaime's behalf when Jaime had been nineteen and alone, his whole life would have been different. So different he couldn't even imagine it, like a dream too far-away and faded to remember. He thought maybe he should be righteously furious on behalf of the boy he was, but he couldn't dredge it up. He was relieved more than anything, and eager to let it all go. He'd already survived it and he didn't need the regret anymore. But he could feel Dayne waiting for _something_. 

“It wasn't just your problem,” Jaime finally said. “But thank you.” 

Dayne nodded, turned to the window and nodded again. “You want to watch the rest of practice up here? I'd like to ask you some things about your races and I could tell you about some of my strategies, see if there's something you could use to help Brienne.” 

She'd be fine without him for one practice day; she had Addam and the rest of the team to walk her through it, and Jaime mostly spent practices casually bantering with her over the radio anyway. The F1 social media channel had started compiling their best exchanges each week and posting it as 'Love Over the Airwaves.' The first time Jaime had played one for her she'd gone red as a starting light and covered her face with her hands. Jaime had saved every one of them to his laptop. She'd probably be glad for the week's break, and Jaime was eager to sit down with the man he'd idolized for so long, even if he wasn't so much an idol anymore but a fellow racer, fallible and human; someone Jaime could look over, not up, to. 

Jaime thought he might like Dayne better this way. 

“That sounds good,” he said, and Dayne smiled and clapped him on the back. 

“Great! I'll get us some real food ordered in and you can start by telling me how you managed to get out of the White Harbor situation that Hightower got me at back in the day. That's been eating at me for years.” 

Jaime laughed and watched the cars running the track, smooth curves and fast straights, the sound like a quiet symphony as they talked late into the afternoon.

* * *

“Box this lap,” Jaime said, and Brienne blinked away a drop of sweat and made for the pit lane as she came out of corner ten. 

“How far ahead?” she asked as she whizzed down and stopped right on the line of Evenstar's garage. 

“Twenty seconds.” 

The jacks dropped her car back down to the ground and the exit light turned green and she was tearing off again, rushing to get back onto the track, knowing Lancel was twenty seconds behind her – less, now, after her pit stop – and getting closer. 

The weekend had been a success so far. Jaime had come back after his afternoon with Arthur Dayne and he'd been as light and happy as the boy he must have been once, teasing her all evening: first over dinner and then in bed, until she'd dreamed about the sight of him grinning wickedly up at her from between her legs and she'd woken aching for more. 

That morning Brienne had put on her best qualifying effort yet, ending up at P-8 on the starting grid. Today she'd opened her eyes clear-headed and thrumming with excitement, eager to feel the teeth-rattling roar of the engines, feel the ground rushing beneath her wheels. 

The world itself rushed by her now as she pushed her car to its limit down the straight, and then reality and gravity slammed into her when she braked hard as late as possible to make the corner. She recalled her long discussion with Edric Dayne earlier, when she and her assigned Grid Kid had been trundled around for driver's parade. It had been an initially chilly hello on Edric's part, the young star unimpressed by F1's only woman driver. Brienne had asked him a few probing questions about his own experience and eventually he'd peppered her with so many return questions about her braking strategy during their time together that Jaime had had to peel him away from her so she could make weigh-in. 

The entire weekend had bubbled with that same feeling of possibility realized, and one last possibility loomed before her now on these final laps where she was in P-5 and Lancel was several cars behind. Lancel had had a lackluster weekend himself, including a crash in Q2 that had put him at P-14 on the grid. Brienne had no qualms about taking advantage of Lannister Corp's bad showing. 

“Ten laps left,” Jaime told her as she crossed over the grid once again. Brienne swiped her gloved hand across her visor and focused on the first, tight turn coming out of the stretch. She jerked the steering wheel a little too hard and felt the tires go stationary under her as the car started to fishtail, before the rubber clamped back down onto the asphalt and she pulled out straight and back in control. 

“You took the corner too tight,” Jaime noted. 

“I know I took the fucking corner too tight. I was there,” she ground out. 

“Language, Wrench. Who knows what tender ears are being exposed to this.” 

Brienne crested a much smoother apex on the next curve. “You're rubbing off on me, I guess.” 

“I do enjoy rubbing off on you,” he said, and it was abruptly even warmer in her helmet. 

“How far ahead now?” she asked, desperate not to encourage him further. 

It didn't stop Jaime's voice being thick with amusement when he answered: “Twelve seconds.” 

Jaime had been right that much of successful driving wasn't about the mechanics of driving at all. She spent all week running the sim laps over and over, she got more repetitions during free practice, and the intricacies of up- and down-shifting had become second nature with time. Driving was about holding many things in her head at once: the wind, the weather, the state of her tires; who was nearby and what they were doing; track conditions and engine status; her own stamina and dehydration levels. Underpinning that was her positioning and braking and the angles of her approach. The act of driving hardly crossed her mind at all. 

But it was all she could think about when Jaime said “Two laps to go,” and she was still ahead of Lancel. 

“Is he still--” 

“Yes, but focus on yourself,” Jaime said firmly and Brienne exhaled and did as directed. She wasn't even entirely sure of her position; she and Jaime had decided it would be less stressful if she didn't know where she was during a race, so she could just concentrate on the car in front of her instead of all the ones in front of that. 

When Brienne turned the final corner before the finish line and the checkered flag came into view, Jaime exploded in her ears with a whooping cheer before she'd even passed the line. “Fifth!” he yelled, “you got fifth!” 

She'd moved up again in the standings, not just more points, but setting another new record for women drivers. When Brienne waved at the crowds on her cooldown lap, more than just the fans in blue waved back at her. 

The media was waiting to swarm her again at the parc fermé, but this time Jaime got to her first and he put himself between her and their cameras and just smiled at her as she took off her headgear. 

“You beat Lancel; he only got P-8,” Jaime told her once she was free, and Brienne felt light-headed with the shock of relief. It was one race out of twenty, but she'd done it once, which meant it wasn't impossible that she might be able to do it again. If she could – if she could _keep_ doing it – Brienne could give Jaime everything he wanted, everything he needed to finally be free of the insidious claws of his awful father. She squeezed Jaime's hand as the rest of the crew shouted her name from the barriers. 

Lancel pulled in a couple of cars behind her and she watched him climb out, slamming his steering wheel back into place with jerky, aggressive movements. He didn't remove his helmet, but when the visor turned their way, Brienne could feel the glare radiating from behind it. 

In contrast to Lancel's bitter anger, Jaime was golden and buoyant and he gestured for Brienne to go soak in the hugs and back-pats of the crew, turning his back on Lancel entirely. But Brienne couldn't help watching Lancel head for the post-race area, his shoulders hunched. Tywin was not going to be happy. 

“Fucking awesome!” Arya shouted when Brienne finally turned to her crew, and she let their enthusiasm carry her all the way to the weigh-in room. Lancel was already gone by the time she made it there, and Drogo gave her an approving nod when she walked in. She traded a few harmless jabs with Loras, too, before exiting to find Jaime waiting for her. 

“I thought you were going to wait at the garage?” she said. Viserys was still in the room behind her, but Euron and Ramsay had both left before her; she could see them walking back down the pit lane. 

“I'm in too good of a mood to cause trouble,” Jaime said. 

“That seems unlikely,” she said and Jaime only smiled wider. 

They started walking back to the garage, already beginning to peel apart what had and hadn't worked in the race, but as they passed by the Lannister Corp garage, they both went silent at the muffled shouting from within. 

It wasn't loud enough to make out the words, but the fury they were being delivered with was all too clear. Brienne hesitated, glancing at Jaime. 

“You can't help him,” Jaime said quietly. “Either one of us showing up would only make Tywin angrier.” 

Brienne had no love for Lancel – he'd been as casually and sometimes cruelly dismissive to her as anyone at Lannister Corp when she'd worked there – but no one deserved to be treated that way. Jaime was right though; if one of them tried to step in it would only make the situation worse. So Brienne let it lie, although the sound trailed behind them like a premonition.

* * *

It was raining again two weeks later when Brienne lined up in her spot at P-6 after the formation lap at the Griffin's Roost Grand Prix. 'Raining' wasn't a strong enough word for the water pouring down out of the sky. Her racing suit was soaked already and her visor was badly streaked. 

“They're really not red-flagging this?” she asked Jaime as the starting lights began to turn on. 

“Not yet,” he said. He sounded resigned, which was an improvement over the twenty minute-long rant he'd gone on to Petyr Baelish that morning.

The lights went out and Brienne accelerated, the wets spinning in place unhappily for a moment before they found traction and she leapt forward with the others. The spray from the cars in front of her was blinding within fifty feet and Brienne backed off a little to try to make it better, but there were too many cars cramped together so she focused on the red brake light flashing periodically on and off from the car ahead of her and briefly touched her chest where the Warrior necklace Jaime had given her lay nestled against her skin. 

She wasn't praying exactly, but she was superstitious enough to not be ashamed to ask for a little supernatural protection. 

By the twentieth lap she knew she needed it – and she'd apparently received some. There had been two spinouts already: one behind her, reported by Jaime as being one of the Nightfort cars, and another in front, Loras skidding through a puddle on the track and careening straight into a wall. Brienne had barely avoided debris from that one, weaving sharply and almost losing control herself, but she miraculously found a dry enough patch that it appeared she'd weaved with purpose. 

The yellow safety LED flicked on on Brienne's steering wheel and she slowed down. She saw the flash of orange lights from the safety car pulling out further ahead. 

“Loras okay?” she asked. 

“Looks like it. Oh, no,” Jaime said and Brienne's hands tensed on the wheel until he added, “he took his helmet off and now he looks like a drowned rat.” 

“Jaime,” she sighed. 

“How are your tires?”

“Fine. It's still early.”

“Addam thinks you should use the time to box and change them.”

“What do you think?”

“I think they're going to red-flag the race in the next twenty minutes and we'll do it then.”

Brienne looked up at the sky, which was a grey so dark it neared black. “I'm with you,” she said. “I've seen storms like this before, it's only going to get worse. I'll wait for the red flag.” 

There was quiet and then Jaime came back on over the radio: “Addam says he wants it officially recorded that he disagrees with this decision.” 

“Duly noted.” 

They followed the safety car around for three more laps and then the skies really opened up and the red LED on her steering wheel lit: they were red-flagging the race. 

She followed the cars back down the pit lane, lining up in seventh place. The crew rushed over and replaced then covered the tires, while Pod, Asha, Addam, and Garlan wrestled a giant canopy over top of the car to keep more rain out of her seat. Brienne already felt like she'd been through all the rides at a waterpark, but she was grateful to not also have to feel like she was driving a leaking canoe. 

The cameras swarmed around as always, but she'd learned to treat them like the endless bugs in the middle of summer: a necessary nuisance that sometimes you had to push through to make them scatter. 

Jaime opened a huge umbrella that had plenty of room for the two of them and gestured for her to join him. “Walk with me, Wrench.” 

She walked close against his side, their shoulders in constant contact, and if it weren't for the snapping cameras, the dull roar of the restless crowd, and her clothes sticking to her in all the wrong places, it might have been romantic. 

“How long do you think until they lift it?” Jaime asked. 

Brienne peered up at the sky and shrugged. “Hopefully no more than thirty minutes. What do the satellites say?”

“About the same. Baelish is reluctant to wait that long. He's afraid the race will time out before that.”

“Well we can't drive in this.” Brienne gestured at the track, where a puddle was forming at the bottom of one of the hilly curves. 

“He might make you.”

“Then what?”

Jaime looked at her, all seriousness. “That's entirely up to you. I'm not going to make you drive in unsafe conditions.” 

“If Lancel drives, I drive.” 

He frowned, but he didn't argue the point. “He's in fourth right now.” 

“I know. There's plenty of race left, I can catch him.”

“You can.” Jaime leaned towards her, likely trying to keep nearby reporters from hearing him. “He's always been terrible on wet tracks. He's impatient when he should wait, holds when he should push. It'll be up to you to force that decision on him once you two meet.”

“I can do it,” Brienne said, low and fierce. 

Jaime nodded. “We've got you on wets again coming out of here, but you should switch to intermediates as soon as you can.”

“Are you leaving that up to me, too?”

“Yes. No one knows the track better in the rain than the driver, and you're better at feeling it than most. If you're going to drive this, I want it to be in your hands.” He tucked his prosthetic hand under one of hers and lifted her knuckles to his lips. “I trust them more than anyone's.” 

Even in the drenching rain it was impossible to miss the excited click of the cameras, and equally impossible not to be entranced by the sincere glow in Jaime's eyes. 

“Then I won't let you down,” she promised. 

He frowned a little. “It's not just for me.” 

“I know, it's for the team.” He was still frowning, but Bronn was yelling her name, so she tucked her arm through Jaime's holding the umbrella and walked them back over to the garage, while the cameras went wild around them. 

Twenty minutes later – after Bronn had run through every question he had about how the car was driving, hoping to take the opportunity to make what small adjustments they were allowed during the red flag pause – Petyr Baelish emerged from the crowd and headed their way. 

“We're going to restart the race,” he said and Jaime huffed and gestured up at the sky. 

“It's still raining.”

“Only as much as it was at the start. Is she going to keep going, or is she going to retire?”

“_I_,” Brienne said with emphasis, “will be driving.”

“Then you better get ready, we're starting back up in a few minutes.” 

“Baelish,” Jaime said, grabbing his sleeve. He leaned forward and said something so softly that Brienne couldn't hear over all the noise around them. Baelish's face was pinched, though, and when Jaime went quiet, he studied Jaime in silence. 

“All right,” he said. He gave Brienne an unreadable glance, and then he moved on to the team next in line. 

“What did you ask him?”

“To watch out for you.” 

“Jaime--”

“Not from the race. From my father.”

“Why would you ask that?”

Jaime looked around them and shifted closer, his mouth near her ear. “Because you're going to beat Lancel again. Our goal meant little to Tywin when he thought you couldn't do it, but twice in a row? He won't sit still for that.”

She felt a sharp spike of fear. “Do you think he would try to do something to the car?”

“Yes,” Jaime said. His breath was hot against her cheek cold with rain. “I've done what I can to surround you with people we can trust, but the more eyes we have on our side the better.”

“And you think Baelish can be trusted?”

“In this one way, yes. You're good for his bottom line, and he'll want to protect it and you by extension.”

“How do you know that?”

Jaime shrugged. “Tyrion told me.” 

She followed Petyr's path through the crowd, found him back by Lancel's car, talking to Kevan. The Lannister Corp principal had a deeply unhappy look on his face and Petyr was talking fast and intently. When he walked off again, Kevan looked their way and met Brienne's stare for a moment before quickly turning away. 

Pod tapped her on the shoulder. “T-time to go.”

“You really think he'll help?” she asked Jaime quietly. 

“I wouldn't let you drive otherwise.” 

Brienne arched an eyebrow. “You think you could stop me?”

Jaime stared her down, deadly serious. “If I thought you were in immediate danger from my father? Yes.” He cleared his throat and gave her a wry smile. “But let's hope it doesn't come to that. Get in the car, Wrench. You have a race to finish.” 

Unsettled, Brienne pulled her headgear back on and climbed into the cockpit, pressed the ignition at Pod's signal. The car roared to life and the engineers poked and prodded around one last time before the final signal buzzed and they were given the order to scatter. 

“Radio check,” Brienne said. 

“I've got you.” 

The car vibrated all around her, her back melding into the seat, her hands comfortable on the wheel. She was already starting to map the track in her head, where she'd be coming out of the pit lane and how long to wait to change to the intermediate tires. When they had started on this road, every step had felt awkward and unknown, every curve a challenge that often felt too difficult to overcome. Now, seven races in, it all had straightened out and for the first time Brienne could see light on the horizon. 

Jaime's heart wanted to protect her, and she appreciated the warmth of his love trying to keep her safe. But Brienne wouldn't be scared off by Tywin Lannister, IAF protection or not, and she wouldn't let Jaime stand in front of her when she needed to find her way. 

The cars rolled back on to the track behind the safety car for a warm-up lap and she took a long, slow breath to focus, weaving the car to bring the tires up to heat. 

“Jaime,” she said as they rounded the last curve and prepared to accelerate and race again. 

“What's up, Wrench?”

“Tywin can't stop me, but you can't either.” The LED turned to green and they were off.

* * *

“Hurrah to Brienne on P-4!” Bronn said, holding up his already half-empty glass to the table crowded with as many of Evenstar Racing's crew as they could fit. 

There was a general cheer and everyone clinked glasses with whoever was nearby. This was at least their third toast, although Jaime had had to slip out to use the bathroom at one point so it might have been their fourth. They'd all been ecstatic at Brienne's incredible run and once they'd pried her loose from the post-race interviews Jaime had decided to hold off on debriefing and directed everyone to the hotel bar to let loose a little. 

Or, as in Sandor's case, a lot. He'd downed an entire pitcher of beer on his own and he was shoved in-between Brienne and Bronn, laughing loudly at some certainly inappropriate joke Bronn had just made. Brienne was laughing, too, her cheeks pink with the alcohol and joy. Jaime was across the table and he knew he was openly staring but he didn't think anyone would notice until Addam elbowed him in the ribs. 

“Keep it together,” he friend said, grinning.

“I'm fine,” Jaime replied, taking a huge swallow of his beer. 

“You look like you want to crawl across the table and throw yourself at her.”

He did, but he didn't have to admit that to Addam. “I'm just looking.” 

“Mm-hm. That's the same way I 'just used' to look at porn when I was fifteen.”

Jaime laughed, startled, and shook his head. “Speaking of men looking inappropriately at their partners in public: where's Dacey?” 

“Waiting for me at her hotel. I wanted to celebrate with everybody first.” 

“How's it going between you two?”

Addam's face lit up with his smile. “Amazing. We hit it off right away, and she's so fun to be around.”

“The long-distance thing is working?” Jaime glanced at Brienne, saw her leaning across the table a little to talk to Podrick and Arya. 

“So far it's been great. We see each other every race weekend and then we talk on the phone a lot during the time in-between. The distance has been good.”

Jaime had felt every minute of the few weeks he and Brienne had been apart at the beginning of the year. Addam had always been better at independence. “I'm glad it's working for you,” he told Addam sincerely. 

Addam checked his phone and then clapped Jaime on the back. “I'm about to do us both a favor.” He slammed his drink down and everyone near him jumped. “As co-principal, I'm calling this evening to an end,” he boomed loudly. 

There was a chorus of lusty booing, Brienne joining in, and Jaime thought crawling across the table to get to her was looking more likely by the second. 

Addam held his hands out to the sides like he was soaking it all in. “Your disapproval sustains me,” he said, laughing a little. “Here's more: we all have to be back at the track for a morning debrief at eight am tomorrow.” 

“Oh come on!” Bronn groused as they booed louder. 

“Party pooper!” Brienne shouted and Jaime couldn't hide his grin at the way her voice bounced off the ceiling. Everything about her was big: her voice, her body, her beautiful heart. Sometimes it seemed like the deep well of need in himself had been made just to hold all of her. 

“All of you go to bed,” Addam said. He pointed at Jaime. “As race engineer, it is your responsibility to get your driver to her room.” 

“I'll do my best,” Jaime said, grinning at Brienne. She stuck her tongue out at him and he started circling the table like he was hunting, his eyes on her the whole time. Her own widened and he saw her body tense. 

“What are you doing?” she asked as he stalked closer. “Jaime.” He just lifted one eyebrow. “_Jaime_,” she shrieked as he swooped in and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her away from the table. The team's genial hooting followed them out as he staggered a little until he re-settled and got his knees under him, her arms flapping helplessly against his back. 

He carried her through the lobby while she dissolved into shockingly girlish giggling, but he halted when he heard an unexpected voice call his name. Jaime turned and saw Melisandre near the doors, looking amused. 

He set Brienne down as the reporter floated near, and Brienne started to protest until she saw Melisandre, too. 

“Why are you here?” Brienne asked a little too loudly. 

“I need to speak with you privately,” Melisandre said. “And I normally wouldn't want to intrude but it's important.”

Jaime stiffened. “If you're trying to get some sort of scoop about something--”

“I'm trying to protect you from a scoop I have sole access to.”

He and Brienne shared a quick look. She didn't look happy or even drunk anymore. “Why don't we talk about this in our room then,” Jaime said. 

“Outside would be better.” 

Jaime frowned but he gestured for Melisandre to lead the way, and they followed her out into the cool night air. It had stopped raining before the end of the race, but the air still smelled fresh. 

She led them around to the side of the building to a dark corner of the parking lot, a suspicious enough place that Jaime readied for someone to ambush them, but there were only crickets and the smell of wet pavement. 

“I'll be direct,” Melisandre said once they were stopped. “I received an anonymous tip that I am certain came from Lannister Corp about compromising photos of the two of you.”

“Compromising? But we're publicly together, we don't care if people see us now.”

Melisandre smirked. “So those other photos were true,” she said, and Jaime sighed. “It doesn't matter now. The photos I have are much worse.” She held out a small USB stick and a black and white print out of a grainy photo. Jaime took both and squinted at the picture in the darkness. 

“What am I looking at?”

“The two of you having sex in your room at the Dragonroad Inn.”

Brienne gasped and Jaime's head jerked up. “Where did you get these?” Jaime growled, stepping nearer. 

“I told you,” Melisandre said, unimpressed, “a tip I am certain came from Lannister Corp. One of the employees at the Inn set up a camera in your room and wanted to sell these photos for publication. They were asking far too much for the quality, but apparently Lannister Corp got wind of it and said they'd get a buyer if the employee swore not to do anything else with them. Then they called me.”

“Why you?” Brienne asked. She'd taken the paper from Jaime and was staring at it. 

“Because I'd done their dirty work before with the other photos. And WSN is the biggest sports network in Westeros, so if we published them, they'd be everywhere.”

“You're sure it was Lannister Corp?” Jaime asked. 

“Yes.”

“Are these all of them?” he asked, holding up the USB stick. 

“Yes. The Inn employee was being indirectly threatened by Tywin and was terrified when I talked to him.”

“What about Lannister Corp – surely they have a copy?”

“They don't. Your father needs plausible deniability, and he puts all his trust in people's greed and worst impulses. I don't think it ever occurred to him I would say no.”

“Why did you?” Brienne said, finally looking up. Jaime was relieved to see she looked angry, but focused. 

“I can't do this to you.” Melisandre faced her directly. “I've been the only female voice in racing journalism for most of my career. Even as a child, when I went with my father down to the track I was an exception and never a rule. I admit that I didn't like the way you seemed to jump all of the shit that I had to put up with. I thought you needed to prove yourself the way I'd had to. You wouldn't believe the way so many of the drivers have treated me through the years.” She glanced at Jaime. “At least you hated me because I was a reporter, not because I was a woman.” 

He grimaced but Brienne shifted and drew Melisandre's attention back to her. “You don't think I haven't gone through my own shit? Some of it perpetrated by you?”

Melisandre sighed. “I know that now. This,” she pointed at the USB, “it's too far. I couldn't let this hurt you.” 

“If you don't do as he asks, he'll cut you out,” Jaime said. 

“I've thought about that and what that might mean for my career. It's a price I'm willing to pay to draw the line here.” 

“Thank you,” Brienne said quietly. 

“I did it for both of us. For all of us,” Melisandre said, and Jaime knew she wasn't talking about him. “I recommend you smash that USB stick with a hammer and then drive over it a couple of times just to be sure. You should also start searching your rooms, in case any other hotel employees get any enterprising ideas.” 

Jaime sighed. “At this point I'm tempted to just sleep in a tent.”

“You should at least splurge for a motorhome,” Melisandre said lightly. 

“That's not a bad idea.”

“I'll leave you two to go make sure your current room is safe. Being kicked out of any Lannister Corp press is going to be difficult to sell to my bosses without explaining why, so if you do have any tidbits to throw my way before you go public with them, I'd be grateful.”

“I might,” Brienne said, surprising Jaime. “What about our lives?”

“What do you mean?” Melisandre asked. 

Brienne glanced at Jaime. “What if we let you film a segment on Tarth. A day-in-the-life deal. We'll let you into our home, do interviews. Give you access to a few Evenstar Racing members no one else has talked with. What do you think?” she asked Jaime. 

“You're sure you'd be okay with that?”

Brienne nodded. “We won't give them everything, just a side they can attach themselves to. Then maybe they'll leave the other sides alone.” The paper in her hand crinkled as she clenched her fingers tightly. “Too much privacy might be its own mistake.” 

“I'm okay with it, if you are.” 

“We'll talk to Pia,” Brienne said. She looked at Melisandre. “If Pia agrees, we'll have her reach out to your team.”

Melisandre smiled and she looked relieved more than anything. “That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

“I'm doing it for both of us,” Brienne said. The two women nodded at each other. 

“We'll be in touch,” Melisandre said, heading for the street. “By the way,” she said, pausing to smile knowingly, “you have a very nice butt, Jaime.” 

Jaime rubbed his forehead and laughed softly. 

When they were back in their room – and after they had spent an hour going over every square inch and finding nothing suspicious – they lay together in bed, Brienne draped around Jaime's back. He rubbed slow circles into her arm, lightly brushing the fine hairs there. They were both exhausted, and Jaime was nearly asleep when Brienne shifted and asked, “Should we keep the pictures?”

He blinked away sleep and tried to focus. “The sex ones?”

She snorted, a hot, sharp puff of air on the back of his neck. “Yes, the sex ones. We're going to look at them at least, right?”

Jaime tilted his head to the side, trying to see her. “Brienne Tarth, are you suggesting we use ourselves as porn?”

Her forehead thudded against his back and he grinned into the darkness. “I regret suggesting this,” she said. 

“Too late for regrets now, your secret voyeur streak is out.” Brienne groaned. “I like it,” he assured her. 

“I don't want to have sex in public,” she mumbled. 

“Yes, we can look at the illicitly taken sex photos for ourselves, but I don't think we should keep them.”

“You're probably right.” She kissed the middle of his back and he considered how tired he actually was. “Now go to sleep,” she said, which seemed unfair given she also pulled him tighter against her warm body. She tucked one long leg over the top of his and he rubbed his hand down it. 

“Sleep,” she insisted, yawning in his ear. 

Jaime exhaled a little and let the last stress of the day go. Everything was fine; Brienne was here.


	38. June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I'm not going to stop worrying about you, Brienne.” He exhaled and went to her side of the table and sat down next to her. She pressed her hand to his knee. “Not when we don't know what else my father might do.”

**Lannister Corp Racing: 52 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 34 pts**

“This was a mistake,” Brienne sighed, staring at herself in the mirror. It was her fourth outfit change in twenty minutes and Melisandre would be there soon. 

Jaime, who had thrown on a normal set of casual clothes – comfortable blue jeans, a white Evenstar Racing t-shirt – and looked perfect, was sitting on the bed scrolling through his phone and occasionally telling her she looked fine. “You look fine,” he said now in as genuinely reassuring a tone as he'd said it the first time, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

“You say that every time!”

“That's because it's true every time.” 

“When is Pia getting here?”

“She's coming with Melisandre. How about I go get Elenda as a neutral third party?”

Brienne bit her lip and nodded. She looked down at her black jeans and the burgundy button-up she'd worn to the first girls' night out they'd done in Sunspear. Sansa would have made her undo another button or two again if she'd been here, but this was supposed to be family-friendly entertainment. Brienne watched Jaime roll out of bed and pad barefoot to the front room where his shoes were and she thought of several very family-unfriendly things they could be doing instead of preparing for this interview. 

By the time Jaime returned with Elenda, Brienne had changed into her fifth shirt. She'd left the jeans on and, since they were supposed to be casual at home, had changed into a faded denim shirt she did actually feel comfortable in. When Jaime saw her his eyes lit up and he nodded forcefully. 

“That one, for sure,” he said. “Tell her, Elenda.”

Elenda smiled a little awkwardly, but she nodded, too. “Jaime's right, this looks good.”

“It looks natural?”

“Yes. Here.” Elenda came over and gestured at Brienne's hair. “Can I?”

“Oh, um, sure.” 

The other woman walked near and started to reach up and then she laughed a little. “Sorry, can you sit down? I'm a little short.”

Brienne did as asked and stared nervously at her hands while Elenda brushed her fingers through her hair. “Jaime, can you get me a hairbrush, please? Brienne, do you have any hair spray?”

“I do,” Jaime said. His side of the toiletry cabinet was considerably fuller than Brienne's. Not that he needed it, Brienne thought. When he took the time to style himself it just made her ability to concentrate worse.

“I'm not going to do much,” Elenda said. “Just kind of keep things orderly.”

“Do you have a lot of experience with this?”

“I used to do it for my schoolkids,” Elenda said, and Brienne flushed. “Oh, honey, I didn't mean that in a bad way, I'm sorry.” They'd had a few more meals between the four of them and Elenda had started occasionally using 'honey' when talking to her or Jaime. If it hadn't been meant so sincerely, Brienne would have disliked it; but the affection with which Elenda said it every time soothed her objections. 

“Thank you, Jaime,” Elenda said, and Brienne looked up to see him smiling warmly at both of them. 

“I'll go wait for Pia outside of the house while you finish up,” he said. He leaned down and kissed Brienne on the cheek, whispering, “Don't change this outfit,” in her ear before he left. 

“I think he's trying to give us bonding time,” Elenda said with a wry laugh and Brienne laughed, too, relaxing a little while Elenda brushed and lightly styled her hair. 

“How's it going with my dad?”

“Good. He's a sweet man. He has a lovely daughter, too. I'm glad to have met both of you.” 

Brienne felt the back of her neck heat. “Thank you,” she mumbled. 

“You know I've never actually been to a Formula 1 race before,” Elenda said into the awkward silence.

“Never?”

“Not once. Is it loud?”

“At times. Do you...would you like to come to one of mine?”

“That would be wonderful! I fear I'd be coming alone, though. For his knowledge and love of the sport, I cannot convince Selwyn to even watch you on TV.”

Brienne sighed. “I know. He's afraid.”

“That he might see you crash?”

“Yeah.” Elenda was finishing up now, and the sticky-sweet smell of hairspray hit the air.

“But he's missing seeing you fly,” she said, coming to stand in front of Brienne. Her face was kind, and sad. 

“I wish he would come to at least one,” Brienne admitted quietly. “But I can't ask that of him. I can't make him stand there for two hours worrying about me.” 

Elenda brushed her fingers through Brienne's loose, long bangs. “Oh, honey,” she said. “That's his job as a father.” She straightened and held out the hairspray. “Now, shut your eyes, I'm going to just finish up the front here.” 

When Elenda was done she had Brienne look at herself in the mirror, hovering behind with a nervous smile. “Well? Is it okay?”

Whatever Elenda had done was subtle; there was a little wave to her hair and the tucked away strands looked intentional not just recklessly done. Her hair looked softer, too, not forced. Brienne still looked like herself but...comfortable. She looked back at Elenda. “It's great, thank you,” she said, smiling shyly. 

“Any time. I heard a car pull up so why don't you put these things back and I'll go wrangle the reporter with Jaime.” Elenda squeezed Brienne's arm and hurried outside. 

Brienne looked down at her own bare feet and wiggled her toes, the nails pale pink and shining. Jaime had painted them for her the night before. They'd been in bed, her in a shirt and underwear, Jaime just wearing his boxers, her foot resting on his warm thigh and steadied by his prosthetic hand. It had been so cozy watching him bent over her leg as he carefully applied the polish, a lock of dark gold hair falling across his forehead. No matter how many times she gently tucked it back up on his head, it slipped free again. They had talked idly of the day and of what to expect for the interview, and they'd been comfortable in the silences in-between. It had been new and familiar and _home_. Jaime had been so proud of himself for how neatly he’d done with his left hand that she'd messed up the first application crawling over to kiss him soundly. She'd managed to wait for both feet to dry before she did that a second time. 

“She should be ready, I'll get her,” Brienne heard Jaime saying and then the front door opened. “Hey,” he said, taking her in with a warm gaze. “Melisandre was hoping we'd start outside. Apparently the light is better right now.”

“This is a good idea, right?”

“I think so.” He shut the door and moved further into the room. “It's only fair to give her this in exchange for what she did. We control the content, so there won't be anything we don't want to expose. And it'll give the fans – and the sponsors – another angle on you besides just 'first woman to earn double-digit points.'” 

“All right. Do I look okay?”

“You always look good to me,” he said, moving a little closer but she held her hand up to stop him. That glint in his eyes was very familiar.

“I just had my hair done, don't mess it up.” 

“For now,” he agreed. “I plan to mess it up plenty later.” 

The at-home portion of the interview took almost two hours to get through. Brienne hadn't realized how much of filming was simply waiting while the crew – or in this case, Melisandre's single cameraman, Merrel – set up and adjusted his lighting and shade rig before they could even get started. The interview itself went smoothly for the most part; Brienne and Jaime had developed an easy back-and-forth that translated well to the questions Melisandre asked them about their life together. Until they got stuck on the question of what it was like to work and live together due to Jaime's obstinate refusal to answer anything other than “Great!” 

“Surely you get sick of each other sometimes?” Melisandre said with a knowing smile. 

“Never,” Jaime said emphatically. 

“Don't you occasionally wish for some time alone?” she directed to Brienne. 

“I really don't. It's not like we're together twenty-four-seven. We're both so busy at work we'll sometimes go the entire day without seeing each other, even though we share an office.” 

Melisandre frowned a little and made some notes on the pad of paper she held on her lap. She motioned to Merrel to stop filming. “People don't really want to hear that there's no conflict at all. It comes across as a bit boring.” 

“We disagree on things,” Brienne said, frowning. “But we like each other. We like being together. How is that boring?”

“News is about conflict.” 

“I thought this was a light documentary?” 

“It is,” Melisandre said, sounding reluctant, and then she sighed. “My bosses had hoped for something a little salacious.” 

Brienne tensed in her deck chair. “That wasn't the agreement.” 

“I know,” Melisandre snapped. “That's why I was looking for something harmless I could sell instead.”

“Sell them hope,” Jaime said quietly. He took Brienne's hand, rubbed his thumb over the top of it. “Sell them the fact that Brienne was there for me at the lowest moment of my life, not out of any sense of obligation, but just because she cared about me.”

“Jaime,” Brienne breathed. 

“Ask me about my recovery after the crash.”

Melisandre leaned forward a little. “You said that was off limits.” 

“I'll put it back on the table, as long as you focus on the healing.”

She considered them, and nodded in agreement. “Deal. We can focus on this instead of touring your home.”

After that they spent the next hour talking about the days and weeks after Jaime had lost his hand, and Brienne marveled at the quiet strength with which he answered every question. When she and Jaime had discussed this interview between themselves, they'd both set certain hard limits: she wouldn't talk about their sex life or what had been between them last year, and Jaime wouldn't talk about his father or his amputation. “I don't want to just be the driver who lost his hand,” he'd said, his voice steel. “I want to focus on the future.” 

Now, guided by Melisandre's questions, Jaime was calm and collected, deflecting only when she pushed a little too hard, otherwise presenting the struggles and the pain and the growth without shame. He held Brienne's hand the entire time. 

Finally sensing she'd driven them as far as she was going to get, Melisandre ended the interview. The three of them stood when it was done while Merrel packed up his equipment. Faintly, Brienne could hear the ocean on the wind. 

“Thank you,” Melisandre finally said, “for trusting me with this.” 

“Don't let us down,” Jaime said, the wry spark in him still, even if it had been dimmed by the afternoon. 

“I won't.” She reached out, hesitated, and then squeezed his forearm. “I'm happy to see who you've become. It's like watching a younger brother figure out his life.” 

“Don't worry, I'm still an asshole, too.” 

Melisandre laughed, rich and delighted, and left them alone. Jaime lifted Brienne's hand and kissed it. 

“I'm proud of you,” she said, brushing her fingers through his hair. 

“I am, too,” he said. He grinned a little, but his eyes were tired. 

“What do you say we take a nap while she interviews everybody else?” 

He tugged her closer and kissed her sweetly. “I say take me to bed, Wrench.”

* * *

The documentary wasn't scheduled to air until the summer break, when the websites and networks and fans would be desperate for new content, so Jaime and Brienne turned their full attention to the next race in Riverrun. Jaime had no particular fondness for the track there. Because of its length, the way it was built, and the weather, there was really only one consistently successful strategy to defeat it: three pit stops, evenly spaced. It was a track that was hard on tires, and the speed of the pit crew made more difference than usual in the driver's success. 

Jaime gave Bronn the task of training their crew all week, making them drop some of their proposed mechanical changes to go over – and over and over – the fundamentals until they'd gotten to a sub-three-second time. Bronn grumbled, but he knew the Riverrun Grand Prix as well as Jaime, so he gathered the younger and newer team together to give them a stern talking to before setting them to work. The pit crew still held their daily Snack Time, but now they intermingled freely: Willem talking with Asha, Garlan laughing with Pod and Lucion. They'd coalesced into a true team, and it only became more apparent when Jaime watched them get Brienne in and out of her first pit stop in 2.8 seconds. 

Brienne, for her part, had qualified at P-5 for the race, her best yet. But her position and their first speedy pit stop were in jeopardy when, halfway through the race, she and Ramsay were battling going into turn nine. 

“Watch your right side,” Jaime said, just as Ramsay swerved to try to push her off the track. She was taking the outside edge, and she went wide to avoid him, but Ramsay kept going wide, too, until all four of her tires were off the asphalt, and then when she was bumping over the kerbs, he went slightly wider still and knocked into her, and both of her right side tires blew. 

“Shit!” she shouted over the radio. Jaime watched the car wobble and weave as Brienne yanked it back onto the inside of the track. The tires were flapping off of the rims like taffy being stretched and spun. 

“It's okay,” Jaime said, grimacing. Their race was done, thanks to Ramsay's overly aggressive maneuver. Jaime glared at the screen. It had to have been at the request of Jaime's father. “Retire to the side and we'll get the recovery vehicle out there for you,” he told Brienne, looking around for Addam to start the official complaint to IAF.

“No,” Brienne huffed and Jaime lifted his eyes back to the screen following her progress. The tires were shredding between the metal and the road, but the car kept rattling along. 

“What are you doing?”

“I'm bringing her in to box.”

“To _box_? Brienne, your tires are gone.”

“And I need new ones.” He could hear the tightness of her clenched jaw without even seeing it. 

Jaime gaped at the screen, watched her weave dangerously close to the wall and then pull back. The wheels were just rims now, her car leaving a stream of sparks in her wake, and she still wasn't quite at the pit entrance yet. 

“Let it go,” he ordered her. “It's too dangerous.” 

“Get the tires ready.”

“Brienne.”

“Tires,” she ground out, and Jaime slammed his palm into the counter in front of him and turned to look over at Bronn and Addam, who were staring in wide-eyed curiosity. 

Jaime covered his microphone. “You heard her,” he said, “get the tires ready. The hards.” 

She was rattling and sparking down the pit lane now, the other crews coming out to watch her progress. “We're going to talk about this after the race,” Jaime said, annoyed. 

“Fine,” she responded, sounding equally annoyed. 

The car swerved and sputtered and crawled into their garage, and Jaime glared at her when she turned her helmet to face him. The pit stop took nearly twenty seconds, and she'd fallen to P-12 just with the slow drive. As soon as they'd put new tires on and changed out her front wing, she pulled back out into the fray. 

“Where am I?” she asked once she was back on the track. 

Jaime checked the screen. “P-15.”

“That's not great.”

“No shit,” he grumbled. He took a breath and scanned the drivers in front of her and the lap she was on. They were barely half done with the race, there was time for P-10 at the very least, though he knew she could get more. “I'm going to suggest a strategy change.” 

“Two pit stops?”

“Two pit stops.” 

“I've already had two.”

“I'm aware of that,” Jaime said darkly. 

“That means I have to run half the race on these tires.”

“You ran half a lap on two tires, surely you can do this.” 

He heard her snort loud in his ear. “If you think it's the right thing to do.”

“Now you're listening to me?”

“If you're finally saying something worth listening to, then yes.”

She meant it as a joke, but it jabbed hard nonetheless, poking at his worry like a finger at a wound. “You've got a lot of catching up to do and everyone else is going to take that third stop. That's your chance,” he said, his tone clipped. 

“All right,” she said. “Let's do this.” 

He watched her car flying down the track, the tires fresh, the driver committed, and tried to push his nerves and annoyance out of his mind. 

Brienne made it to P-10 with ease, her car and her driving both superior to the back-of-the-pack challengers by this point in the season. She fought hard to pass Connington for P-9, Hyle for P-8, and Ramsay again for P-7. He watched that pass warily, waiting for Ramsay to swerve once more, harder this time and to worse effect, but she sailed past him unscathed. When Addam reported back a minute later that IAF was going to penalize Ramsay for his earlier maneuver, Jaime exhaled in relief. 

“What's he getting?” Jaime asked. 

“Five-spot drop next race and points against his license.” 

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.” Addam shrugged. “Looks like they're trying to send a message.” 

“Not just to him,” Jaime murmured. He watched Brienne as she curved low and fast through the esse and pulled nearer to Loras. “We'll have to tell her, even though she's going to hate feeling singled out for protection.” 

“Not it,” Addam said quickly and Jaime gave him a bland stare. 

“How is it _I_ turned out to be the more mature of the two of us?”

“She's _your_ girlfriend.”

Onscreen, Brienne engaged the DRS and zipped past Loras, making such a smooth cut as they swung into the wide turn that it looked like a dance. A perfectly executed pass, and then she was off again with Lancel next on her list. He thought of the sparks flying off of her rims, of his father's furious glare at the party. “Yes she is,” Jaime said, proud and aggravated and afraid. 

In the end, on tires held together by willpower and luck and with only two laps left to go, Brienne nudged past Lancel, put a car's length between them, and held on to sail under the checkered flag at P-5 again while the red Lannister Corp car followed her moments later at P-6. 

Jaime was there to meet her at the parc fermé and he felt the same stirring in his blood when she climbed out of the car, sweaty and tired and flushed, as he had the first time. But as he approached the car he saw the telltale bulge in the tire rubber, how wrecked and near-to-blowing they were, and the remembered fear of her car careening towards the wall, the tires ripped out from under her, cooled his normally warm smile. 

Brienne's own smile faltered, too. “What's wrong?” she asked over the noise of the other cars pulling in, the thousands of people around the track cheering for the top three. Oberyn had come in P-1, with Robb in P-2 and Renly third. Jaime shook his head a little.

“Nothing,” he said, not liking how petulant he sounded, and her frown deepened. 

He held his anxious and angry tongue through her post-race weigh-in and interviews, and while Addam led the debrief, Jaime sat in the corner, dropping deeper into a sullen well. All he could think of was what could have been, how quickly it could have gone wrong, and how little Brienne had seemed to care. 

When Addam started reviewing the moment where Ramsay had pushed her car wide, he glanced at Jaime. “Obviously Ramsay went too far on this maneuver,” Addam started. He left an empty space that he clearly intended Jaime to fill, but Jaime just glared down at his own monitor. 

“I get him pushing me off the track, but surely the hit had to be worth a penalty,” Brienne said. Jaime felt her looking at him, too. 

When he stubbornly refused to respond, Addam sighed. “It was. We put in an official complaint and Ramsay gets penalty points on his license and a five position drop at the Twins.”

“Five places _and_ points? Connington couldn't even get three seconds when he nearly rammed me into the pit wall.”

“Well,” Addam said, hesitant. “Jaime?”

“What?” he snapped. 

Next to him, Podrick shifted uncomfortably. 

“Do you want to talk about the penalty? Like we agreed?”

“He hit her outside the track, it's a reasonable penalty.”

“A penalty I couldn't have gotten two weeks ago,” Brienne said. “This is because of what you asked Baelish, isn't it?”

Jaime straightened in his chair and met her narrow-eyed stare. “Yes,” he said. “It's a good thing, too, since you're not interested in protecting yourself.” 

“I made it safely into the pits.”

“That was luck. You just as easily could have been slammed into from behind by someone who didn't clear your car in time.”

“But it didn't happen,” she protested. 

“It could have!”

Addam stood abruptly, and when they turned matching glares on him, he grimaced. “We'll pick up the debrief tomorrow. Everybody's dismissed.” Podrick shoved his chair back so fast he nearly tipped over and Jaime snorted. Jaime started to rise, too, but Addam pointed a finger at him. “Not you. You, either,” he said just as firmly to Brienne. “You two are not allowed to leave until you work this out.” 

“Hope you're planning on guarding the door all night,” Bronn muttered. 

Everyone hurried from the room, leaving just Jaime, Brienne, and Addam, who hovered in the doorway. When the noise of the crew in the hall had dissipated, Addam looked between them. “I'm serious,” he said. “Figure this out.” With that he shut the door on them and Jaime avoided meeting Brienne's pointed stare. 

“What's your problem?” Brienne asked finally. 

“What makes you think I have a problem?”

“Jaime,” she said, exasperated. He sunk down farther into his chair. “Is this because of the tire thing?”

“The 'tire thing',” he scoffed. “You mean when you recklessly brought your car in against your race engineer's advice?”

“I knew I could make it.”

“You didn't _know_ that, you hoped.” 

“You're being too cautious.” Brienne's voice was tight now, her own annoyance tugging at its leash. 

“Too cautious?” He glared at the blank monitor in front of him. “I've seen other drivers try to pull that stunt, Brienne, and a lot of them have crashed.” 

“I didn't. I made it in.” 

“You shouldn't have taken a risk like that.”

“We're almost twenty points behind and only have twelve races left. I have to take chances, and this one paid off. I don't understand why you're so upset.” 

Jaime finally looked at her, and immediately regretted it. Her eyes were bright and flaring with unexpected hurt, and his own heart tried to turn against him. He was scared and aggravated, but he knew he was partially right. “You _don't_ take risks like that.” It was the one thing he'd counted on to keep her safe.

“I have to, to win. You taught me that.”

“Did you even consider stopping when I told you?”

She at least had the decency to look guilty. “I know you're worried about me,” she started and Jaime leaned forward, jabbing his finger at her. 

“You don't trust me.” 

“Of course I do,” she insisted. “You're just...not good at ignoring your heart.” 

Jaime stood up, paced restlessly along his side of the table. “How am I supposed to be your race engineer if you think everything I tell you is compromised because I'm too emotional to help you?” 

“Jaime.” Brienne was calm now, a solid wall against the growing storm of his frustration; it only served to prove the point, and irritate him further. “I trust you as much as you trust me,” she said firmly. “Did you even consider that I knew what I was doing?” 

Her question landed like a punch and Jaime rubbed his hand down his face. It was quiet in the conference room, except for their breathing and the echo of their argument. “Maybe you'd be better off with Addam as your race engineer.” 

“No,” she said almost before he'd finished. “I meant what I said on Crone's Day: I only want you with me when I'm racing. We just have to figure this out, like we've figured out everything else.” 

“I'm not going to stop worrying about you, Brienne.” He exhaled and went to her side of the table and sat down next to her. She pressed her hand to his knee. “Not when we don't know what else my father might do.” 

“I see,” she said, quiet with understanding. “You think he was the reason Ramsay did it.”

“He had to be.” Jaime brushed his fingers along the top of her hand, over the knuckles scarred and rough. “That bullshit hit outside the track was dangerous for Ramsay, too, and there was no need for it when he'd already pushed you out. Ramsay's an asshole, but he's not an idiot. If Tywin had bought off Alyn, too, or Lancel had come around, one of them might have tried to force you to retire, you might have crashed, you might have--” The words jammed up in his throat and he shook his head abruptly. “Your life is worth more than a few points.” 

“I can't let what Tywin might do dictate the rest of my season, or we'll lose before we've begun. I'm not going to stop taking chances.” 

Jaime brought her hand up and kissed her palm. “If he hurts you-”

She pressed her fingers to his lips, quieting him. “He won't.”

“You can't know that. Those photos to Melisandre; Ramsay today. My father's desperate, and that only makes him more dangerous.” 

“It does, but we know he's coming. Ramsay and Lancel can only do so much, and you put in the work hiring a team we can trust. Even Melisandre got out from under his thumb. Tywin doesn't understand how people will support each other just because they can, without any money involved. Jaime.” Her eyes were big and blue and brave. “He will not win.” 

Jaime breathed out, long and slow, and pulled her into his arms. She was here and she was right, but he could not lose her to his father's obsession with the Lannister legacy. “I want to believe that,” he murmured into her hair. 

“You believe in me,” she said, her words hot on his neck. “And I believe in you. That's all we need.”

“You make it sound so easy.” 

“It won't be. But we'll make it work anyway.” 

He tightened his arms around her firm body, let himself trust in her strength and skill, and in his own, too. “You have to meet me in the middle, during a race. I don't expect you to always do what I tell you, but you have to at least take it seriously.” 

“I will. I promise.” She kissed his neck, and he nuzzled deeper into her hair. “Do you think Addam will let us out now?”

Jaime laughed a little, nudged her hair aside to gently trace the shell of her ear with his tongue, felt her shiver at the touch. “We could just stay.” 

“Oh,” she breathed, gasping when he took her earlobe in his teeth. “You do have good ideas.”

* * *

If Tywin had anything planned at the Twins Grand Prix, they never saw what it was, and Brienne managed to run a clean race and come in just ahead of Lancel again at P-5. She marveled how even a fifth place run – her third one that season – was starting to feel standard. Standard, and not enough. She was consistently coming in ahead of Lancel now but she wanted more. She wanted a podium. Beating Direwolf was an impossible dream with their skill and speed, but Sunspear and Stag Motors both seemed beatable, at least once, and there was no reason it couldn't be her. 

Their final race in June was at a track that hadn't been used as a Formula 1 track in almost a decade: Volantis, the oldest and most respected of Essos' Nine Free Cities. It would be brutally hot in the cockpit, Jaime warned her, so Brienne stepped up her training in the two weeks they had between races. By the time their in-between weekend rolled around, Brienne was already exhausted and instead of the romantic evening they had planned for Friday night, she collapsed into bed and fell asleep just after eight. 

She woke the next morning to a firm, cheerful-sounding knock on the door. 

“Ignore it,” Jaime mumbled from where his head had slipped between their two pillows again when his body had starfished its way over to her side of the king-sized bed. 

There was another knock, persistent but still undemanding. Brienne blinked at the clock; 9:17am shone back at her. 

“'M'gonna see who it is,” she said, rolling to a sitting position. “One minute!” she shouted to whoever was at the door, and Jaime dragged the nearest pillow over his head. 

She pulled on her old, comfortable robe and walked barefoot to the front door, peering out of the peephole. There was no one out there, until a hand waved in front of it and Tyrion took a step backward into her line of sight. 

She unlocked and opened the door. “Tyrion!”

His mismatched eyes scanned her body and she tugged her robe closed, although she was wearing a t-shirt and shorts underneath it. “Brienne Tarth,” Tyrion said, inclining his head. “A pleasure to see you as always. It appears I've woken you.”

“You did, but I should have been up. It's been a long week. Come in,” she said, gesturing for him to enter. 

He did, his sharp gaze roaming the room – resting, she noticed, on the items that were distinctly Jaime's. “I see my brother has fully moved in.” He sounded almost disbelieving. 

“Yes,” she said with a slight frown. “And we're both happy about it.” 

“Good. Don't look so annoyed at me; you're the only woman I'd trust to not be taking advantage of him for his money or the looks he obviously inherited from me.” Tyrion smiled winningly at her, and though she was still rankled, she found herself smiling back. 

“Warrior's balls, Tyrion, it's too early in the morning for your brand of wit,” Jaime groused from the short hallway leading to the bedroom. He was bare-chested and in sweat pants and Tyrion rolled his eyes. 

“I don't merit a shirt?” Tyrion said, even as he held his arms out in welcome. 

Jaime laughed and knelt down to wrap his brother in a tight hug. “It's good to see you,” he said, “though I don't recall you saying you were coming.” 

“I didn't.” Tyrion climbed onto their couch and Jaime sat next to him, Brienne taking the chair. “I couldn't say anything, just in case. I'm disparaging your name more than usual around the office so our father doesn't suspect me any more than he usually does. But I wanted to see you.” Tyrion looked down at his hands folded in his lap. “I missed you, brother.” 

Jaime squeezed Tyrion's shoulder and Brienne stood. “Can I get you something to drink, Tyrion? Or eat? We're due for both ourselves.” 

“Some coffee will help control this maudlin streak,” Tyrion said, giving her the same mischievous smile she was used to seeing on Jaime's face. “I prefer to drink my breakfast.” 

The kitchen was not that far from the living room and though she busied herself readying the coffee pot and getting her egg and vegetable omelette together for breakfast, she could still hear all of the brothers' conversation. 

“It's Father's birthday this weekend,” Jaime said. “I suspect that accounts for the timing of your visit.” 

“It does. He's pouting terribly at not being able to throw some over-the-top shindig, but he's framed it as not having time to celebrate when there's so much work to be done for the company. All bullshit, of course, but the media seems to have swallowed it.”

“What's he doing? Won't he miss you?”

“When has Father ever missed me?” Tyrion asked, and his bitterness was sharp as broken glass even to Brienne in the kitchen. “But no, he won't be missing anyone. He's retreated to a spa or a baby's blood transfusion center or wherever the awful rich go.” 

She heard Jaime laugh a little. “Any news to share?” 

“A couple of things. Should we wait?”

“No, I'm sure Brienne can hear us from the kitchen, and anything you have to say, we both need to know it.” 

“I have good news and bad news; which do you want first?”

“Bad news,” Jaime said. 

“He's got some plan cooking to try to drive a wedge between the two of you.” 

Jaime scoffed loudly. “That's not bad news, that's absurd news.”

“From what I can glean from Uncle Kevan, Father is confident it will work. That doesn't mean it will, of course, but keep an eye out.”

“Fine. What's the good news?”

“He can't get a single driver to listen to his pleas for help on the track.”

Brienne's hands clenched around the handles of the mugs she was pulling out of the cupboard. She poked her head out of the kitchen and Tyrion looked up. 

“So you can hear us. The penalty that Baelish dished out to Ramsay Bolton? Apparently quite an effective deterrent when our father has no money to convince drivers to risk their own races and lives on behalf of the Lannister name. I would expect clear sailing on the track, at least, or as clear as it can be given the sport itself.” Tyrion frowned in distaste. “I understand waltzing with the law, but your dance with death is impenetrable to me.” 

“All these years right in the thick of it and you still don't understand,” Jaime said, disappointed. 

Brienne stepped into the room, handed each man a mug of coffee. “Have you ever even been in a race car?” she asked Tyrion. 

Tyrion gestured at his legs. “The cockpits are small, but not that small.” 

“Then finish your coffee quickly,” she said. “I'm going to show you.”

“Show me? Show me what?” He looked at Jaime who shrugged, though he was grinning. 

“Finish up,” Brienne said mysteriously. “I have a call to make.”

* * *

They met her uncle Endrew down at Evenfall track after a hurried breakfast where Tyrion and Jaime had one-upped each other with loving insults. Brienne was ready to throw both of them out of the house by the end of it. But Jaime had driven them to the track, and Tyrion had sat in the back seat and marveled at the steering wheel enhancement, and their obnoxious brotherly posturing had disappeared under their shared interest in the engineering. 

“Uncle,” Brienne said now, greeting Endrew in the parking lot. 

He gave her a typically gruff hello and stared openly at Tyrion. “Who's that?” he asked, pointing. 

“My brother,” Jaime said sharply, and it was strange to see Jaime's defensiveness from the other side, the way he shifted a little to put himself between Tyrion and whatever attack he expected to come. 

“Really?” Endrew said, looking between the two of them. “Guess I can see it.” Brienne sighed in relief; her uncle was not the most tactful of men. “I parked the car on the grid for you already. Can only fit two of you, though.” 

“That's fine; thanks for getting here so quickly.” 

They started walking towards the track entrance, Brienne and Endrew ahead of Jaime and Tyrion. “She hasn't been put through her paces for a while, will be good to see her stretch her legs.” 

“Why are fast cars always female?” Tyrion asked from behind them. 

“Tradition, I guess,” Brienne said uncertainly. 

“Is it because they're supposed to be pretty? Seems sexist.”

Brienne glanced back at him, but he didn't look like he was mocking her, just genuinely curious. “I don't know,” she admitted. “I've never really thought about it.” 

“I'm not calling my car a boy,” Endrew grumbled in the same tone Brienne had heard him complain that “feminism had gone too far” because of women in the army.

“You've been in a sports car before, right, Tyrion?” Brienne said hurriedly. 

“Indeed. I'm pretty sure it's a requirement for being a Lannister.” 

“What's the fastest you've ever gone?” 

Tyrion tilted his head thoughtfully, and Brienne was struck again by how many mannerisms he shared with Jaime. Even his one green eye was the same shade, though like Cersei and Tywin, the person behind it was entirely different. He may not have been as pointedly cruel as them, or as casually cruel as Lancel and Kevan, but he still lacked Jaime's soul-deep warmth; his mischievousness was far more biting than his older brother's. 

“On the record, I have never gone above the posted speed limit,” Tyrion said wryly, “but I have seen just the other side of 100 on the speedometer.” 

Brienne grinned. “A snail's pace,” she said, and she gestured at the bright yellow sports car gleaming in the sunlight. “The base is a Lannister Lion, obviously, but my dad and uncle have done some upgrades to the engine. Here.” She handed him the helmet she'd brought, the bright green Moat Cailin one, which he took with a displeased wrinkle of his nose. 

“I had hoped that one was for you,” he said. 

Brienne gestured for Jaime to hand her her racing helmet and she pulled that on. “Get in. Jaime will help you get the buckles situated.”

One of the other upgrades to her uncle's Lion had been to the interior, where safer five-point harnesses had been installed in place of regular shoulder belts. It took some doing, and a hurriedly improvised booster to get him at a better height, but soon Tyrion was strapped in next to Brienne in the car. He rubbed his hands along his thighs and stared nervously around the interior. Brienne started the car, the engine roaring like its namesake. Jaime tapped on Tyrion's window and she lowered it for him. 

“You look nervous, brother,” Jaime said with an easy smile. 

“I'm sure Brienne is a wonderful driver, but I confess I don't know if my small body was built for all this.” 

“You'll be fine. Just find something to hold onto.” He winked at Brienne and tapped the top. As soon as he'd stepped away, she engaged the clutch and shifted into first and floored it. 

She was certain by the way Jaime and Endrew were laughing in her rearview mirror that Tyrion's “Oh shit!” had been just as loud outside of the car as in it. 

Brienne didn't give him much chance to catch his breath after that. She knew the Evenfall track better than any piece of asphalt on the planet, and she knew the engine of her uncle's Lion almost as well as her own F1 car back when she'd been the only one working on it. What she hadn't anticipated was how much she'd improved as a driver in the weeks since she'd started racing, and the thrill of it was as new and overwhelming to her as to Tyrion. She was laughing in delight as she found the perfect apex of the curves without having to think about it, as she pushed the Lion to the edge of its abilities and then further, the tires squealing, Tyrion wide-eyed and breathless beside her. 

“Okay?” she asked when they hurtled past their cheering two-man audience the first time. 

“Yes,” Tyrion gasped, so she pushed them faster. 

In the end she took him on five laps and then slowed, rumbling the car to a stop back by Jaime and Endrew. When the engine cut off, she still felt the power of it in her hands, the urge to keep going as addictive as Jaime had once warned her it would be. 

Jaime was helping Tyrion out of his harness now, though he kept shooting her heated glances as he did. 

“What did you think?” he asked Tyrion. 

The smaller man laughed, high and shocked. “I think I get it now,” he said. “I couldn't do it, but I get it.” He let Jaime help him out of the car and then Jaime leaned back in. 

“That was impressive,” he told her. 

“You want a turn with me?” she asked, and the look he gave her careened through her with the same heady speed. 

He took the helmet from Tyrion and climbed in and she helped him buckle, her fingers brushing his chest. Brienne glanced out the window to see Tyrion and Endrew in intense, excited conversation, before dropping her hand to Jaime's upper thigh. 

“I want to make out with you so much right now,” he said in a low, amused voice. 

“I could always stop on the far side of the track,” she said and saw his eyes light up. 

“Let's do a few laps first or Tyrion will just harass me relentlessly.” 

Brienne laughed and the car growled to life again. “He'll harass you anyway, but I'll make it worth your time,” she promised. 

Taking Jaime around the track was different than taking Tyrion; she was more prepared for her own changes in skill this time, but Jaime appreciated it in a more visceral way. Where Tyrion had been overwhelmed by the adrenaline, Jaime was enthralled by it. He leaned into the corners, appreciated her approaches, radiated approval and elation in an electric pull. Two laps in he snuck his hand to her leg, and it reminded her of driving back to his hotel room in her dad's truck after their first time together. She'd driven with reckless eagerness that afternoon, both of them pulsing with need; but even though she had become familiar with every inch of Jaime's body, she felt even more impatient for his touch today. 

On the fourth lap she stopped as far as she could from where Tyrion and Endrew stood, and she and Jaime yanked off their helmets and harnesses and crashed into each other in the cramped space of the car. There wasn't much room to do more than kiss hungrily, Brienne twisting her hand into Jaime's shirt, Jaime's hand trapped between her legs. 

She slammed her knee into the dashboard and he scraped his elbow on the stick shift and soon they were panting and laughing against each other, both grimacing a little. 

“Sports cars were not made for making out,” Jaime said, holding his elbow gingerly at his side. 

“Especially not for tall people.” Brienne helped him get his helmet and harness back on and then squeezed his hand with hers. “Do you think Tyrion will want to stay at the house tonight?”

“If he does, then he accepts responsibility for whatever he hears.” 

“Jaime,” she sighed, laughing a little and blushing a lot. 

In the end, Tyrion stayed at the Lighthouse Inn and Brienne was as loud as she wanted to be with Jaime surging on top of her, praising her skill and her strength and then driving over the edge with her in a rush. 

As they lay curled together after, she ran her fingers over the bumps and valleys of his stump. 

“Was it okay earlier? To be on the track?” she asked him. 

Jaime had his head tucked into the curve of her neck and she felt his lips on her skin when he answered. “It was. I didn't even consider I could regret it.” 

“We could do that more if you want.”

“Maybe.” He kissed the hard bump of her collarbone. “I don't miss driving the way I thought I would.” 

“You're happy?”

“I am,” he agreed, and she could feel his warm smile against her shoulder, his quiet, pleased exhalation. “I'm happy.” 

“I am too,” she said softly, holding him near.

* * *

Jaime had not been to Volantis in years, and from the moment he stepped into the thick, humid air on their arrival, he started worrying about Brienne. 

He'd raced in Volantis several times back when it was regularly on the schedule, each one a marathon of pain. He'd be so dehydrated by the end of the race that his muscles would cramp in uncontrolled spasms. He hadn't been the only one, either; it took days to recover from the race, and every single driver's primary goal through the weekend was to drink enough water to drown an elephant. 

What had shocked Jaime most during his first race here was how much weight he lost from pre-race to post-race weigh-in, all of it sweated out into his driving suit and seat. Even the water in the bottle in the cockpit turned too hot to be drinkable after only a few laps, and by the end of the race it was a battle with his own mental exhaustion as much as with the other drivers.

He'd tried to help prepare Brienne for all of that as much as possible during the two week break, asking Syrio to push her harder physically and to run her through workouts in the sauna. Addam had drilled her in four-hour chunks instead of two, so that the actual race time would seem shorter; and Jaime had gone over the strategy and intricacies of driving a night race in enough detail that she'd gratefully fled to Syrio's hellish workouts by Wednesday. 

Brienne was as physically and mentally prepared as she could be, but Jaime worried still. He kept it to himself, though, not wanting to undercut her confidence. It had been a joy to watch her grow into her own skills – when she'd torn around Evenfall track in her uncle's Lion, he'd been stunned by how _proud_ he was of her, of how she'd not just shouldered the work and the struggle, but embraced and conquered it. Jaime had never been more sure she'd get a podium by the end of the season, that they would find a way to catch up to Lannister Corp in points and take his father down. 

But he didn't lay that on her, either; not this week, not here. 

Though free practice went well, he could see the uncertainty in her eyes when she got out of the car. 

“You weren't kidding,” she said, red-faced and sweating, as Jaime handed her a wet towel to loop around her neck. 

“It'll be worse on race night,” he warned her. “Here.” He handed her a full water bottle. “Drink. And keep drinking.” 

She did as he asked and though he rubbed his hand soothingly down her back during dinner, though he kissed her tenderly in the morning, he otherwise kept his distance. After she qualified at P-6 on Saturday, he tried to send her back to the hotel early to rest with most of the crew, but she insisted on staying with him and Bronn and Addam to walk through a last strategy session. 

It was there in the Evenstar paddock, the four of them lounging in the folding chairs and eating a dinner of slightly stale sandwiches, when Addam looked up at the doorway and his face shifted into a polite smile. “Hi, miss, are you lost?” he asked. 

Jaime turned in his seat and blinked in surprise. “_Melara_?”

She looked much like she had the last time he'd seen her: dark hair in artful waves, dark eyes bright and full of idle amusement, makeup hiding the freckles he knew she had. Her smile was not as sharp though, and nowhere near as promising. “Jaime. It's good to see you.” 

He stood and approached her awkwardly. How did you greet someone you used to sleep with? He opted for holding out his left hand to shake and she laughed a little and went in to hug him instead. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stepping back after a quick embrace. In the time they had been each other's infrequent comfort, she'd never been to a single race. 

“I was hoping to talk to you alone for a few minutes.” She looked past him and he knew she was staring at Brienne, and he felt his hackles rise in defense. 

Brienne had asked one night about Jaime's romantic history, when they'd been sated and half-asleep already in the dark. He'd told her he'd never been in a relationship, that there had never been another woman he'd loved, and true as it was he hadn't gone beyond that. A problem now, possibly, that he would rectify as soon as he could, but he didn't want it to come from Melara herself. 

“Hello,” Melara said past his shoulder, and he heard Brienne stand. “You must be the one Jaime called me about.” He glared at Melara and she just lifted a brow and moved past him, her hand held out. “I'm Melara, a friend of Jaime's.” 

Bronn coughed a little and Jaime turned his glare on the older man. “You two can head back to the hotel,” Jaime said firmly. “Brienne and I will catch up.” 

Addam, clearly confused, let himself be led away by Bronn, and Jaime heard Bronn faintly say, “I'll tell you on the way.” 

“It's nice to meet you,” Brienne was saying, shaking Melara's hand. Brienne was easily half a foot taller than the other woman, broader and more rough-hewn. But Jaime knew her heart was infinitely more tender, and he didn't know how to protect her if Melara started throwing sharp barbs before he could explain. 

“We're alone,” Jaime said, moving to stand next to Brienne. “What do you want?”

Melara's lips twitched. “Not quite alone,” she said, “and this is information I think you should hear on your own first.” 

“No,” he said, but Brienne touched his arm gently. 

“It's alright, I'll go back with Bronn and Addam. Talk to your friend, I'll meet you back at the room.” The way she said it, he suspected she knew there was something else going on, and he squeezed her hand tightly. 

Jaime pulled her close and kissed her with more emphasis than their likely-short goodbye warranted. When he let Brienne step back she was flushed and he could feel Melara's entertained smile. 

Once he and Melara were truly alone, he gestured broadly. “Well?”

“Let's take a walk,” she said. “Where there are more people.” 

Frowning, he followed her back out into the open area between the paddocks. It was nowhere near as busy as it had been earlier, but there were still some crews running around, a few lingering media. He felt them train their cameras his way and he glanced at her. 

“What's going on?” he asked, keeping his voice low. 

“Your father sent me,” she said, and Jaime stopped in the middle of the walkway, a chill running through him even in the humid heat of Volantis. Melara paused, too, and then grabbed his arm and tucked hers through it, pulling him along. “Keep walking. It's not as dire as you think, but I need you to make it look for the cameras like you don't despise me.” 

Jaime took a few unwilling steps, and then exhaled, trying to relax. If Melara were here because of his father, then this must have been what Tyrion had tried to warn him about. 

“Tywin Lannister is very keen on destroying your relationship with Brienne,” Melara went on, confirming it. Her voice was light and cheerful though her words were not. “He found out about me and made an offer I was compelled to take.” 

“Did he threaten you?” Jaime asked her, nodding at a Sunspear executive who was staring at them. 

“In a way. Not in any way that could be traced back to him, but though the offer was presented as optional, I knew it wasn't.” 

“I'm sorry,” Jaime sighed, and Melara patted his forearm. 

“You Lannisters are trouble.”

“I know. What did he ask you to do?”

“He paid me to seduce you.” 

Jaime stopped again, stunned. “He _what_?”

Melara made him start moving once more. “You heard me. Good money, too, and the suggestion that if I didn't try it he'd find a way to make it seem like you paid me when we were actually together.” 

“Fuck, I'm sorry,” Jaime repeated with more feeling. 

“I flew out here first class, so it's not all bad. But I'm going to tell him I tried and that I couldn't do it.” 

“You couldn't even if you had tried,” Jaime said fiercely, and she squeezed his arm with hers. 

“I know. I've seen all the same photoshoots and interviews as everyone else. Your father seems desperate and he's smart enough to know she's your weakness, but not smart enough to know she's your strength, too. He reached out to Taena, as well, but she gives less of a fuck than I do and turned him down. I suppose that's why we couldn't make it work between us: I cared too much more than she did.” Melara looked genuinely disappointed, and this time Jaime rubbed her arm soothingly. She smiled a little in response. “Regardless, I just need you to walk around with me a bit, let me kiss you lovingly on the cheek, and then disappear into those offices again with me for a minute before I leave in a flurry and Tywin will believe I did what I could and I can keep his money and my reputation.” 

“You really think he'll believe that?”

“I'll make sure of it. Now, since we have some time to spend, why don't you tell me more about your dream girl. She seems quite unique.” 

Jaime looked at her, but Melara didn't seem mocking, just curious. “She is,” he allowed. They walked the length of all the paddocks and back while he talked about Brienne, about his accident and everything after, as he asked questions about Melara's life that he'd never bothered to think of before. Their bodies had been intimate, but that half hour was the most they had ever talked to each other. By the time they stopped outside of the Evenstar paddock and she gave him a lingering kiss at the edge of his jaw, Jaime wondered if they might have been good friends if they'd met when they were both less closed up and angry. He led Melara inside the paddock and they huddled near the back for a last minute. 

“It's been good to see you,” Jaime said. “Thank you for giving me permission to go to Tarth last summer.” 

Melara's mouth pulled to the side in a half-smile. “You would've gone anyway, but I'll take the credit for it.” 

“I don't know if I would have,” he insisted. “Things were different then. I was different.” 

“You were. So was I. I do wonder what might have happened if we'd changed a little sooner, but I suspect it was for the best.” She ruffled his hair briefly, familiar and sweet. “Goodbye, Jaime.” 

“Goodbye, Melara. Text me if you're ever on Tarth; I know a great fish place there.” 

Melara pressed her lips softly to his cheek, patted his chest gently, and with a last, small smile, she hurried from the paddock. 

Jaime spent a few minutes cleaning up their discarded dinners before getting a ride back to the hotel, moving quickly through the halls until he was back in his room with Brienne. Alone with his thoughts, Jaime had slowly convinced himself that she might have spent the entire time worrying, that by the time he got there she'd be crying or even have all her things packed. When he opened the door, Brienne was sitting on the bed, legs stretched long and loose in front of her, and she looked unconcerned.

“Hi,” she said. “How did it go?”

Jaime halted near the bed, relieved. Everything he wanted to tell her, the explanations he owed her, all crowded on his tongue. “Melara and I used to have sex,” he started and then winced when Brienne paled. 

“Oh,” she said and Jaime sat down next to her. 

“That was not at all how I wanted to tell you,” he groaned. “It was just...friends with benefits, although we weren't even really friends.”

“Okay,” Brienne said slowly.

Jaime forced himself to take a breath. “Let me start over. Hi.” Brienne snorted a little. “How are you?”

“Confused, honestly.” 

“I can imagine. Bronn didn't tell you anything?”

“No, he said it was better coming from you. I thought she might be an ex-girlfriend but you'd said you'd never had one.” 

“And that was true. We didn't do things together outside of the occasional sex. We hardly talked. It was comfort, when one or both of us needed it. I knew her when we were kids; she was Cersei's friend until she stopped letting Cersei try to control her life, too. We reconnected a few years ago and it felt like a natural step.” 

“You don't have to explain it to me, Jaime,” Brienne covered her hand with his. “I am curious about what she wanted to tell you, though.” 

Jaime grimaced. “My father's hand at work again,” he said, and he saw the realization dawn bright and clear in Brienne's eyes. 

“The wedge Tyrion warned us about last weekend.” 

“Yes. Fortunately, Melara's loyalty isn't so easily bought and she was upfront with me. Nothing would have happened, but she could have caused image problems nonetheless. Instead we took a walk so Tywin would get proof we were together and she'll convince him that she tried and failed to seduce me. It should be enough to put my father off wasting money on that avenue in the future.”

“He's really not going to stop, is he?”

“No.” Jaime turned his hand over to grip hers tightly. 

“There are too many ways for him to hurt you.” 

“Me?” Jaime squeezed her hand. “What about you?” 

“Without his money to buy people off, I'm safe enough on the track. We're being more careful about where we stay, and your brother is still there on the inside to warn us. We just have to win on the track.” 

It all sounded very reasonable, but Tywin was a man of boundless capability for revenge, and Jaime knew his father would never leave the protection of the Lannister legacy just to Lancel. They'd patched every hole his father had made so far, but he wished he could better anticipate how Tywin would strike next. “We're only down by fourteen points now.”

“I need to keep beating Lancel.”

“Yes. Are you ready for tomorrow?” 

“I think so.” 

“You are,” he assured her. “We couldn't have prepared you any more.” 

“After the last two weeks, tomorrow should be easy.” 

He shook his head. “Don't underestimate Volantis. It will be a battle, between you and your own exhaustion.” Jaime kissed her temple and started the process of undoing his prosthetic. Brienne helped him, her fingers moving quick and sure over his arm. “You're really not upset about Melara?” he asked once they'd taken the hand and the base off.

Brienne looked up at him, and he was grateful in that moment for her constant, clear-eyed honesty. It was like looking at the bottom of one of the clear lakes on Tarth, nothing hidden from view, just the beauty and the truth in the light. 

“I'm really not,” she said, and she sounded half-surprised herself. “After everything, how could I not trust you?” Brienne covered his chest with one warm hand. “It's impossible not to hear the sound of your heart, Jaime. I...I like it.” Her eyes dropped from his, shy. “It helps, sometimes, when I worry I might not be enough for you.” 

“Brienne.” He lifted her chin gently. “You will always be enough.” 

She kissed him and he tasted her belief on her lips. 

The next day, Brienne proved she was more than enough for the Volantis Grand Prix, as well. It was stiflingly hot and Jaime hovered over her like a worried hen beforehand and kept up a steady stream of encouragement as the strength in her responses faltered near the end. Jaime knew the last few laps could feel impossibly long, a driver's body impossibly weak. But Brienne held on, as he knew she would, taking fifth once again to Lancel's seventh. At the end of the race, Jaime was there to see her step out of the car on wobbling legs, to watch her remove her helmet and expose how exhausted and red-faced she was, her hair sticky with sweat. He'd never been prouder, or more aware - in the moment when she found him in the crowd and a smile bloomed proud and bright across her face - that he would love her for the rest of his life. All he had to do now was make sure he was enough for her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Volantis = Singapore Grand Prix, in case you're wondering if there is a real-world equivalent. Singapore is a nighttime race that is notoriously hot and physically demanding on the drivers. Also the losing two tires on one side and then making it in for a pit stop is a real thing that happened, but I can't remember to who or which race. I've watched too much stuff now, I'm losing track. :)


	39. July (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hoping for more feels greedy,” she said, her tone hesitant. “I already have so much. It should be enough.” 
> 
> There were people everywhere on the grid, crews rushing around, drivers and their principals and engineers trying to get in final strategy discussions. Media hovered at the edges looking for a last-minute scoop or interview. The thirty minutes was almost up and soon it would be in the drivers' hands once more, every one of them more cocky and self-confident than they likely deserved. Except Brienne, who could out-drive any of them, and worried that thinking so made her somehow ungrateful. 
> 
> “You deserve everything,” Jaime insisted. 
> 
> “No one deserves everything,” she said, but she was smiling, that worried line between her eyes gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GeMikanXIII on Twitter [made this super awesome drawing of Jaime and Brienne](https://twitter.com/GeMikanXIII/status/1248508205597986816?s=20) based on this fic! Thanks to halcyon-red for requesting it. 🥰

**Lannister Corp: 74 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 64 pts**

“What?” Brienne yelled for the third time. The music was pounding out on the dance floor, but Arya kept trying to talk to her anyway. 

Arya rolled her eyes and started dance-walking off of the floor, her slender body shimmying as she led Brienne back to their reserved booth. Sansa and Margaery were there making out, which was why Brienne and Arya had gone to the dance floor in the first place. Arya, apparently fed up with her sister's love life, slammed both hands down on the table when they walked up, and the other two women yelped and split apart. 

“_Arya_!” Sansa shouted. “What's wrong with you?”

“I'm tired of watching you make out with your girlfriend. It's ruining the whole vibe.” 

“What kind of vibe doesn't include kissing hot girls?” Margaery said, and Arya rolled her eyes so hard it encompassed her entire body. 

“Brienne,” Arya pleaded, and Brienne held out her hands. 

“Nope. I don't want to get involved. I'm happy to just sit at the bar if I need to.” 

“See? You're driving your friend away,” Arya said to her sister. “This is supposed to be about all of us hanging out together and you've got to go and ruin it with your romance.” 

Sansa made a face, but she scooted enough to at least put some daylight between her and Margaery's bodies. “I don't even see the others anyway,” she said, pouting. 

Brienne slid into the booth and yawned. They'd already been here a couple of hours and she was getting tired. It was the Friday night after free practice at the track at Winterfell, and while Arya and Sansa using their family connections to get them into Winterfell's most popular club had seemed like a good idea when they'd planned it last week, now that she was here, Brienne was mostly just sleepy. Volantis had only been five days ago, and it had taken her two days after that just to feel like her body wasn't still weak; they'd flown up to Winterfell two days later. 

But as the other women started filtering back, Brienne had to admit she was glad they'd made time for this. Shireen had stopped traveling with them once she'd gotten good at arranging everything remotely, but all the other women had made it: Pia, Asha, Ygritte, Dacey, Meera, and the other three already sitting there. It felt like a reunion, and they'd all eagerly jumped at the chance. 

Arya leaned across the table and started shouting at her. “I was saying I heard you can crack a walnut with your neck.” 

“Who in the seven hells told you that?” Brienne asked, laughing. 

“Bronn.” 

That sounded like something Bronn would say, although it was a trick that Brienne had never tried. 

“Can you really do that?” Meera asked her, wide-eyed. 

“I've never done it, I don't know what he was thinking.” 

“I bet you can,” Asha said appreciatively. “With all that neck training you do? Someone go to the bar and get her some walnuts.” 

“I'll do it,” Ygritte said, slipping back out of the booth. “This I've gotta see.” 

Brienne was not drunk enough for this, but with qualifying tomorrow she hadn't wanted to get drunk, so she downed her glass of water and eyed the handful of whole walnuts Ygritte brought back. She'd rounded up Pia, too, who had her phone out. 

“Are you recording this?”

“Fuck yes I am,” Pia said, laughing. “This is going to kill on social media.” 

Brienne rolled her eyes, but she'd seen drivers do far more absurd things in the name of social media presence – the lawnmower race between Robb and Jon came to mind, with Robb whooping and hollering and Jon grimly holding on and doing his best. He'd won, but at a cost to his dignity. 

“Besides, Jaime's going to want to see this,” Pia added. 

“He's gonna flip out,” Arya concurred, and Brienne flushed. 

“Just give me the walnut already,” she said, as Ygritte handed one over. Brienne took the nut and did a few test runs of where she thought she was strongest, ended up holding it mid-way on her shoulder, where she could squeeze it the best against her head. “Ready?” she asked Pia, who nodded from behind her phone. “Here goes nothing.”

Brienne tensed and then pressed her head and shoulder hard towards each other and even over the music, there was a loud crack in her ear and she felt the shell split apart, catching it with her fingers. When Brienne held it out to the group in her palm, they all leaned in and then erupted in excited cheering. 

Pia's fingers were flying over her phone and then a minute later she grinned triumphantly. “Posted!” she exclaimed, holding out the screen for Brienne to see. _Brienne showing the men how it's done; your turn @youngwolf_ it said; _#F1 #DontMessWithTheEvenstar #NutcrackerChallenge_

Brienne winced. “I don't want to attack Robb,” she protested. 

“He'll love it. Besides, he has way more followers than you do and when he tries it, that will drive more people to us. This will be great, trust me.” 

“I guess,” Brienne said. She watched the video, the ease with which she'd cracked the hard shell. She had to admit that it did look impressive, even if it played into the worst of the taunts she'd suffered growing up. Brienne had spent her childhood attempting to fit into the small boxes her peers had tried to shove her in, her gangly arms and legs never conforming. And the things she wanted that were expected of girls – love and care and tenderness – they just as staunchly denied her. There was no way to win and eventually it became easier just to stand alone rather than repeatedly fail. Even as an adult, every day was a struggle to accept that what she truly wanted was hers and not what was expected of her, even though wanting those things only made those who had tormented her feel like they were right: Brienne was too strong, too big, too much to be normal. 

With her intense training for racing she had watched her body change, growing stronger each week, and it had been a relief to embrace the easy power instead of fighting it. Her body was useful and Jaime hadn't seemed bothered by the way she'd had to buy new shirts to fit the new broadness of shoulders, but Brienne had never so purposefully called attention to that side of herself either. “You really think Jaime won't be turned off?”

Every pair of eyes at the table looked at her with such disbelief that she felt her whole face go hot. 

Asha laughed loudly. “Turned _off_? He won't even be in the same galaxy as that. He'll probably pass out from blood loss.” 

Brienne covered her face and laughed a little in embarrassment. 

“Don't show him until tomorrow morning,” Arya said. “I want to be there when this goes down.” 

The next morning they were sitting at two tables shoved together in the simple hotel restaurant when Pia came by and Arya waved her over. 

“Good morning,” Pia chirped. “Have you shown him yet?”

“Not yet,” Brienne mumbled. 

Arya and Bronn were sitting with them, and Arya gestured wildly. “We were waiting for you.” 

Jaime was looking skeptically at Brienne. “I feel like this is a trick.” 

“Oh it's not,” Pia said, grinning. She held the phone out to him. “Just press play when you're ready.” 

“You're not ready,” Arya assured him. Brienne wished briefly she could melt into the floor until this was all over, but Jaime pressed play and she heard her own voice saying “Ready? Here goes nothing.” 

There was the noise of the club and then the group screaming excitedly and then silence as the video ended. When she hesitantly looked over at Jaime she could see his jaw working hard, and his eyes were boring into her. 

“I told you she could do it,” Bronn said, shoving the last piece of bacon in his mouth. 

“Surprise,” Brienne said, making jazz hands. 

“Hey,” Sandor shouted from the lobby. “Are you assholes ready to go or what?” 

The woman manning the front desk glared at him. “Sir, please be considerate of the other guests,” she insisted. 

Sandor rolled his eyes. “Well?” 

“We're coming, hold onto your panties,” Bronn shouted back, and the front desk woman sighed loudly. 

Pia plucked her phone back from Jaime and they all started to rise, except him. Arya started laughing. 

“Lannister's having a downstairs problem,” she said gleefully and he shot her an annoyed look. 

“I'm still your boss,” he grumbled. 

Jaime grabbed Brienne's wrist as she brushed by him, and tugged her down so he could whisper in her ear. “I'm gonna be thinking about that all day,” he told her. “So it only seems fair for you to know I'll be waiting for you in your driver's room after qualifying. Drive fast.” 

She did, and came away with her best starting position yet of P-4, which they celebrated immediately after against the wall of her driver's room. 

When they were slumped in each other's arms, breathing hard and Jaime softening inside her, Brienne ran her fingers through his sweaty hair while he mouthed the muscles of her neck. “I'm relieved,” she admitted, and he made an inquiring hum against her skin. “I was worried you'd be-- that you wouldn't like it.” If it had been any man but Jaime she might have said repulsed, but he'd taken too much obvious pleasure in her body to believe that. 

“How could you think that?” he asked, pulling back to look at her. His tone was light but it was impossible to miss the faint echo of hurt in his eyes. 

“Women aren't exactly celebrated for being giant walking muscles. Most people find it…unattractive.” 

“Do you think that's how I see you?” he asked quietly. 

“No. But I was afraid you might after the video.” 

“Even now?” 

She chewed her bottom lip, glanced down and away from him. “I spent most of my life being told I wasn't worth anything because of how I looked,” she said quietly. “It's not easy to just forget that, even though I never doubt that you love me.” 

He brushed his fingertips over her freckled cheeks, the lips that always looked too big even on her face, down the jagged line of her broken nose, and Brienne felt tears form hot in her eyes at the tenderness in it. 

“You think I don't see you because I love you,” Jaime said, tilting his head to catch her downcast eyes. “I love you because I see you.” 

She felt a tear slip free, then another, and he brushed them gently away as they dripped down her face. “I'm sorry,” she sniffed and he pulled her head closer and kissed her softly. 

“There's nothing to apologize for.” In contrast to his gentle fingers and lips, his tone was fierce. “We're partners. I _want_ to help you, Brienne.” 

“Maybe I should talk to Dr. Tarly, too.” 

Jaime was blurry in her eyesight and she rubbed away the last of the tears with the back of her hand. “If you want,” he said. “Whatever you need.” 

She nodded. “I'll call him when we get home.” 

“Is there something I can do, too?” He was so hopeful, so pleading, that her heart caught in her throat. 

“You being you is enough,” she murmured. Something bright and almost painful in its intensity crossed Jaime's features and he kissed her long and deep and promising. 

“Then in the meantime,” Jaime said, pulling back so she could see the mischievous glint in his eyes. “Can I buy a bag of walnuts?”

* * *

The next morning before the race, while Jaime and Brienne reviewed the plan for the tight right at turn thirteen, Drogo came over from the Dothrak garage next door.

“Hey,” he barked, holding his phone out. Jaime was unsurprised to see Brienne's walnut-cracking video playing. “Why didn't you tag _me_?”

Brienne's cheeks went patchy pink and white and Jaime grinned. “Our social media director posted it,” she said. 

“Stark is too puny to do that,” Drogo scoffed. 

“You think you can?” Jaime said. 

“I've got a better chance than Stark.” Drogo's smile was a challenge. 

“I'd like to see it.” 

“After the race. Whoever can't do it has to buy drinks for the other man's crew.” 

“Deal,” Jaime said and Brienne snorted. 

“I don't think you can make that bet for Robb,” she said. 

Jaime waved his hand airily. “It'll be fine. He owes me for letting him win the championship last year.” Brienne looked stunned by his flippancy, and Drogo looked like he wanted to smile but wasn't sure if he should or not. “Oh come on,” Jaime said, “if _anybody_ can make a joke about it, it should be me.” 

“I never said sorry about your hand, Lannister,” Drogo said, gesturing at it. “Fucking amazing year you had.” 

“Thanks. Though, this one's pretty great, too.” 

“You're gonna get a podium,” Drogo said, taking in Brienne with his dark eyes. 

“I...I hope so,” she said. 

“I would just like to point out that when it happens, I predicted it first,” Jaime interjected. The look she gave him was worth it. “Time for parade, Wrench.” He kissed her quickly on the cheek and then shooed her off with Drogo. “Off you go, you two. Have fun. Don't hurt your hands waving to all your fans.”

“Never thought he'd be more annoying when he was happy,” Jaime could hear Drogo saying as he and Brienne walked off. 

“You have no idea,” she agreed, and Jaime was still smiling when she came back afterward to finish getting suited up and get the car out onto the grid.

“Drogo's not wrong,” he told her as they waited on the asphalt for the final checks before the formation lap. 

“About you being annoying?”

He chuckled. “Possibly. I meant getting a podium. You're so close.” 

“I just want us to beat Lannister Corp,” she said quietly. 

He searched her eyes; the truth was as easy to see as always. “It's all right to want more.” 

“Placing fourth as a rookie is already more than I could have expected.”

“Why would you not expect more? You work harder than any of these other drivers. You think Renly spent as much time preparing for Volantis as you did? You think Loras didn't complain endlessly about it?”

“Hard work doesn't mean you'll win.” 

“It does when you have the skill to back it up.”

“Hoping for more feels greedy,” she said, her tone hesitant. “I already have so much. It should be enough.” 

There were people everywhere on the grid, crews rushing around, drivers and their principals and engineers trying to get in final strategy discussions. Media hovered at the edges looking for a last-minute scoop or interview. The thirty minutes was almost up and soon it would be in the drivers' hands once more, every one of them more cocky and self-confident than they likely deserved. Except Brienne, who could out-drive any of them, and worried that thinking so made her somehow ungrateful. 

“You deserve everything,” Jaime insisted. 

“No one deserves everything,” she said, but she was smiling, that worried line between her eyes gone. “But I could earn a third place position.” 

“That is the least assertive way you could have put that, but I'll take it. Fight for what you want, Brienne. I've seen you fight; it'll only make you better.” 

The five-minute warning chimed and he squeezed her arm. “You've got this,” he told her and she nodded and pulled on her helmet. 

Halfway through the race Lancel was in P-3 and she was holding onto P-5 when Lancel went in for fresh tires. “We'll bring you in in a few laps,” Jaime told her. “That will put you on fresher tires at the end.” 

He watched the familiar red of Lancel's car streak into the pit lane and pull up and then, with growing astonishment, he saw Lancel's pit crew fumbling with the tires. People were shouting at each other, the old tires were ripped off and the car left to sit for five seconds, ten, while the crew went back for the tires they were supposed to put on. 

“Holy shit,” he said over the radio. “They forgot Lancel's tires.” 

“What?” 

Finally, Lancel's tires were on and he tore off so fast from the garage that his car fishtailed a little before he yanked it back on track, but the damage was done: by the time he escaped from the disastrous pit stop, he was back in P-15. 

“His crew forgot his tires. I don't know if they weren't told he was boxing or what, but he just dropped twelve spots.” Jaime glanced at the media feed and Tywin was seething in the back of the garage, one hand clamped across his mouth, his eyes boiling with rage. Jaime pitied that crew, who were assuredly going to get the tongue-lashing of their lives when this was all done. 

When Brienne came in five laps later, Jaime watched his team closely, was relieved when they had her in and out in just under three seconds. 

After that, Lancel's and Brienne's races were the polar opposite of each other. Lancel struggled to pass even the mid-range drivers, whatever equilibrium he normally had behind the wheel as hopelessly misplaced as his tires had been. He managed to fight his way back to P-13, where he seemed stuck behind an unusually aggressive drive by Viserys and Daario. Brienne, on the other hand, overtook Renly at P-4. With one lap left and Lancel just barely clawing his way to P-12, Jaime started doing the mental calculation of what fourth position points would mean. A calculation he kept from Brienne, wanting her to just focus on holding Renly at bay. 

But if she managed it...

Jaime tapped his prosthetic hand in a steady, repeating rhythm on the counter in front of him, trying to watch both Brienne's battle with Renly and Lancel nearing P-11 at the same time. 

“Jaime.” That was Addam at his elbow, pointing at the constructor numbers WSN put up on their feed.

Jaime covered his microphone. “I know.” 

They stood side-by-side in nervous silence, and Jaime silently prayed to the Warrior to give her speed and confidence. But Brienne didn't need the help of the gods. When Renly attempted to pass her on the last turn before the straightaway to the checkered flag, Brienne maneuvered to cut him off, and then accelerated more quickly than Renly out of the curve until there was a wheel's width between them – and that was how she crossed the line for P-4, the Evenstar garage exploding with cheers behind him. Addam grabbed Jaime by the shoulders, shaking him furiously until Jaime's teeth were rattling. Though he couldn't see the numbers clearly, they were burned into his brain anyway: Lannister Corp still had 74 points in the constructor championship, and Evenstar Racing now had 76. 

He waved Addam off and got Brienne on the radio. “Incredible job, Wrench. You got P-4.” 

“Where did Lancel end up?”

“He didn't even make the top ten.” He knew she was as vividly aware of where they were in the points standings as he was, and he let her do the math in her head, knew the moment she'd figured it out when she gasped over the line. 

“We're ahead,” she said, and the joy in her voice was a sunbeam. “We're ahead!” 

When he was there to greet her at the parc fermé, Brienne climbed out of the car and immediately threw herself into his arms, not even bothering to remove her helmet first. She pushed her visor up and it wasn't triumph or even pure happiness he saw there, but relief first and brightest. 

“I'm proud of you,” he said, and he could see red in the hint of her cheeks not hidden by the balaclava.

“There's half a season left.” 

“We're only focused on today,” he said, “and today you're ahead. Go get weighed in and I'll meet you back at the garage. Pia wanted me to do some early media interviews so you don't have to take them all on.” 

Jaime patted her on the top of the helmet and left her with Podrick and Arya, who were babbling excitedly at her from both sides as they walked with her to the weigh-in room. When he turned to start the long walk back down the pit lane, he saw his father striding for the parc fermé, and though his angry glare flickered briefly over Jaime, the full weight of it bore down on Lancel as he climbed out of his car at P-12. Kevan had been scurrying along behind Tywin, but when Tywin reached the car, grabbed Lancel by the elbow and leaned in to talk low and furiously, Lancel's father just stood there, wringing his hands. 

Slowly Jaime moved nearer, trying to make out what Tywin was saying over the constant low-level roar of everything else happening around them. It was impossible to get close enough to hear much, but he did catch a few choice words, mostly insults and curses. Tywin was so consumed with his rage that he didn't notice Jaime, but Kevan looked up and his round face went pale. He shook his head a little, warning Jaime off. Lancel's shoulders were curved forward and drooping more with each heavy blow from Tywin's tongue, but the four Lannisters just stood there, stuck in a tableau that Jaime was all-too-familiar with. 

Though his father had felt stunned and betrayed when Jaime went to Dragonfire, Jaime had always known he would flee at the first opportunity. He'd loved racing since his first time in a toddler car; one of the few videos they had of his mother was her pushing him wildly down the street and making driving noises while he laughed with the pure, unburdened delight of a child. But his mother had not lived long enough to soften Tywin's worst impulses towards controlling his children, and by the time Jaime had hit Formula 3, he'd been on the receiving end of a dressing-down like Lancel was undergoing more times than he could've counted even if he'd had three good hands. Even as Jaime had gotten older and had proven himself the best in his league time and again, Tywin had only gotten more severe, pushing at every moment for perfection. Dragonfire had come calling when Jaime was seventeen, and it had been a celebration of his escape as much as his success. 

Lancel was an adult now and he or Kevan could have stopped this, but Jaime couldn't help seeing himself as a teenager, as a child: the same dipped head, the same back breaking under the weight of everything Tywin was putting on him. Jaime straightened, and stepped near enough to talk. 

“Pity your pit crew isn't better trained yet, Uncle,” he directed at Kevan, interrupting whatever Tywin was saying without even sparing him a glance. “Cost yourself quite a drop in position.” 

Kevan's mouth dropped open and Jaime could feel the heat of father's stare. “That's none of your business now,” Tywin said. “You've made that quite clear.” 

“You better have them run extra practices,” Jaime bulled on, ignoring his father entirely. He was afraid if he addressed the man at all, it would end in violence. _It would have been better if you were_ he heard whispering under the noise. 

“We don't need your help, Jaime,” Kevan said, finally finding his voice. And his courage, too, as he gingerly tugged at Tywin's arm. “Let's finish this conversation at debrief, brother, Lancel needs to get to weigh-in.” 

Tywin huffed and Jaime just looked past him, nodding and sauntering off. It was only when he was back at the Evenstar garage that he was able to unclench his fist.

* * *

On the off-Saturday in-between the Winterfell and Lannisport Grands Prix, Brienne woke up far too early and laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Jaime breathing. His birthday wasn't for a few days, but her gift for him was ready and she'd made plans to give it to him today so he'd have time during the weekend to enjoy it. 

_I could wake him_ she thought as the clock turned to six-thirty, but letting him sleep in was a gift, too; they'd been at the office late last night reviewing wing changes Arya and her team of engineers were working on. So she let him sleep and tried unsuccessfully to follow him back into her own rest. 

Her resolve lasted until seven-fifteen, and then she shook his arm gently. “Jaime,” she whispered, “are you awake?” 

He made a kind of rumbling groan that reminded her of a hilariously grumpy lion, and frowned at her with his eyes closed. “Now I am,” he muttered. 

Brienne wanted to kiss him, but she also wanted to give him his present, and if she started kissing him now it would take even longer so she shook him a little again. “I have something for you,” she said and one green eye peeked open. 

“I'm interested,” he drawled and she rolled her eyes. 

“Not that.” But it was hard not to take the time for it as he curled towards her, sliding his leg between hers, his growing erection pressing into her thigh. “I want to give you your birthday present,” she protested weakly. 

“I love it already,” he said against the valley at the base of her throat and she wound her fingers in his hair and tugged his head back. That only served to make him press his pelvis harder against her. 

“It's not me,” she said. “It's in the garage.” 

He kissed his way across her collarbone and then gently dragged his teeth over her shoulder until she was shivering. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes,” she moaned and then shoved him away. “You're very distracting,” she accused him. 

“I'm trying to be.” 

Brienne bit down the smile that threatened, but his eyes lit up anyway. He had her and they both knew it. _Damn him_, she thought with no real force behind it as he put his mouth to use distracting her completely. 

An hour later when they were satisfied and showered and full of Brienne's hastily mixed instant oatmeal, she dragged him out of the house.

“You know, my birthday is on Tuesday,” Jaime said as she pulled him across the lawn to the one-car garage at the side of her father's house. 

“I know. Trust me, you'll be glad you're getting it now.” They stopped in front of the side-door to the building and she turned to him, suddenly nervous. What if he hated it? What if he thought it presumptuous? He'd be kind, but she was so excited and it was making her anxious imagining him disappointed or, worse, hurt by what she'd done. 

It was too late for regrets now, though. Brienne had spent the money and time and Jaime was watching her excitedly. 

“Happy birthday,” she said, unlocking the door and stepping aside so Jaime could go in first. He did, taking a cautious step, like he expected a trick when he turned on the light, and then she heard his sharp intake of breath. 

In the garage, with modifications made specifically so Jaime could drive it with one natural hand, was his Iron Throne motorcycle, gleaming in the bright lights. 

“It's okay if you don't like it,” Brienne quickly added.

“Brienne,” he started, and then went silent as he walked towards it. He hovered his hand over the motorcycle's seat, the handlebars, the chrome of the engine, like he was afraid if he touched it, it would disappear. “You did this for me?”

She moved next to him. “I found someone online who was born with half of a right arm and has been riding motorcycles anyway. It was a surprisingly simple modification, we just moved the front brake to that lever,” she pointed at a foot lever near the rear brake, “and shifted the throttle to the left side. My dad did most of it since I was a little preoccupied.” Brienne chewed her bottom lip and stared at him. He looked shellshocked, which she thought was good, but he was also so _quiet_. “Is it okay? I know I should have asked before we did anything to it, but I really wanted it to be a surprise.” 

Jaime took her hand and pressed his lips to it, his head bent, and it wasn't a kiss so much as a connection he seemed unwilling to break. When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were shining. “I love it.” He tugged her closer, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her softly before pressing their foreheads together. “You still would have been enough present, though.” 

She smiled and kissed his nose, and when he grinned she unwound herself and gestured at the bike, her pent-up excitement overflowing. “I've been waiting _weeks_ to watch you ride this,” she said. “I thought we could take it down to the track and you could practice there. And eventually once you get comfortable with it, I want you to take me on a ride.”

His answering smile was thrilling.

They loaded the bike carefully into the back of Selwyn's truck and strapped it down and Brienne drove them down to the track. After a quick tutorial of the updated controls, she handed Jaime the bright green Moat Cailin helmet with an innocent smile. 

“No,” he said firmly. 

“If it were me, would you let me drive without a helmet?” 

Jaime glared at her and grabbed the helmet from her hands. “Stubborn,” he muttered, shoving it awkwardly on his head. She helped him settle and secure it and then stepped back. Even with the ridiculous helmet, he still looked annoyingly handsome in his dark jeans and dark t-shirt. Especially when he sat down on the bike and shot her a cocky grin. He looked happy; he looked _free_.

She loved him so fucking much. 

Brienne swallowed down her heart beating hard in her throat and pulled out her phone, snapping a quick picture while he stuck his tongue out at her. “That one's going on the social media sites unless you smile nicely,” she said. “Do one of your patented Jaime Lannister Smolders.” 

Jaime laughed, ducking his head and looking embarrassed. “I don't smolder,” he protested. 

“Jaime.” She tilted her head knowingly and he laughed again. 

“I sold a lot of merchandise this way,” he insisted, but he took a breath and then looked at her with such intensity she forgot to take the photo. “Well?” he said, when she just stared at him. 

Brienne shook her head and felt her neck heat. “Sorry, I got distracted.” 

“I'll bet you did,” he murmured seductively, and she took that picture, though she knew she'd keep it for herself. 

“Alright, Lannister,” she barked, “show me what you've got.” 

He saluted and started up the engine, and she could see the excitement and the nerves in the way he rubbed his fingers along the handles, how he re-seated himself on the leather. His jaw was rigid with tension. She walked nearer so she wouldn't have to shout over the engine to talk to him. 

“There's no one else here,” she encouraged him. “It's okay if you don't get it right away.” 

Jaime nodded, licked his lips, nodded again. “I wasn't even this nervous when I was learning the first time.” 

“I'd say it's just like riding a bike, but...” He snorted, but she saw his shoulders inch down a little. “Just go to the end of the straight and come back,” she suggested. 

“Okay, I can do that.” He settled his prosthetic hand loosely around the other handle, exhaled a little, and took off. The motorcycle jerked forward and she saw his foot flail a little before connecting with the brake and stopping. He repeated that process several times in a row, until it looked less like an accident that he was stopping and starting, and more purposeful. The bike wobbled under his hands, but he started going longer distances, and when he hit the end of the straight he walked it around and headed back. 

Brienne retreated to the side and sat down on the pit wall to watch him re-familiarize himself with his bike, to learn the new ways to make it move. She could see his frustration the times his instincts kicked in and he tried to use his prosthetic on the missing right-hand throttle, when his braking came awkwardly and too hard. After an hour she waved him back and they paused for a water break, Jaime wiping his sweaty forehead on his arm. 

“It's getting easier,” he said, before handing her his bottle and getting back on the bike. 

They spent the day there, Brienne growing pink-cheeked in the sun as she watched him conquer this latest challenge. She could see the driver Jaime had been in his intense focus, the way he relentlessly kept at it even when the movements started looking easy. By the end of the day, as the sun was dripping orange and gold on the horizon and her phone was almost out of battery, Jaime took the bike on a single complete circuit without stopping, without tipping, and with enough speed she could imagine he'd been doing it for years this way. He pulled to a stop in front of her, his face shining with joy. 

“Hop on,” he said, moving forward to make space. “Let me take you on a drive.” 

Even though she was sweaty and stiff from too much sitting, Brienne eagerly leapt to her feet and climbed on behind him. This time it was easy to wrap her arms around Jaime's waist and press her cheek against the soft fabric of his shirt, to breathe him in and meld their bodies together without worrying she was being too forward or asking too much. 

She'd brought her helmet, too, just in case, and they stopped at the truck to pick it up. 

“You sure you don't want to switch?” he asked hopefully and she just smiled and pulled hers on. 

Brienne could feel the difference in Jaime's muscles as he drove them out onto the roads of Tarth, how much more concentration it took him to do what had come so naturally last year. But she still felt safe holding onto him, and as he wound along the coastline into the sunset, Brienne thought she might never stop smiling. 

She was giving most of her attention to the ocean on fire with the sunset and to Jaime's muscled thighs between her own, so when he made a turn to head inland, she didn't realize where they were going until they started the climb up. Brienne knew they closed Evenfall Hill at sunset, but she suspected Jaime wouldn't care and for once neither did she. 

As expected, a short way up the drive, the long gate across had been closed and padlocked shut. Jaime rumbled the motorcycle up the edge and stopped, shutting it off. 

“We could walk,” he said as Brienne slid off the bike. 

“Where's the fun in that?” she retorted, smiling at him. She gestured for him to dismount, too, then gauged the space, taking the bike from his hand and rolling it to the far side. They squeezed the motorcycle in-between the gate edge and a set of obnoxiously scratchy bushes, giggling and yelping as the sharp-edged leaves left their marks. Brienne wondered if this was what the other teens had done when she was home with her dad and her loneliness. She felt dizzy and invincible with the thrill of being out here with Jaime, sneaking around, exchanging brief, promising caresses in the dark. Jaime started the bike again and she laughed in delight when he sped up and up into the night, following the bright beam of the headlight. 

They parked at the top and left the motorcycle behind and this time they walked side-by-side down the path to the meadow. Brienne had come here to be alone, to taste storms, to try to show Jaime who she was without having to say a word. Tonight she was here just to be. 

Stepping out of the path to the edge of the meadow, she caught her breath at the view. The meadow itself was quieter than she'd ever experienced it, the grass muting their footsteps, the tall trees silent sentries. Evenfall Hall loomed huge and shadowed behind them, but there were two universes in front of them, split by the deep black line of the ocean: the scattered lights of the buildings below and the endless stars above. She glanced at Jaime to remark on it, but he was staring enraptured at her. It felt like the stars themselves were in her heart. 

She curled her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer to kiss him hard. He needed no more invitation than that, fisting his hand in the back of her shirt and pulling her into his body with an ease that still surprised her sometimes – though she admittedly was not resisting. 

Jaime's mouth was familiar now, but with the wind sneaking cool between them it all felt different: the hungry slide of his tongue over hers, the way he nipped and tugged at her lips. Brienne pressed her hands against his chest and he pulled back a small amount, vibrating under her palms like her car at the start of a race, all coiled power ready to surge forward. His strength and force were under her command and his eyes watched her with the same intensity he would wait for lights out. 

There was so much she wanted to tell him: about the ways he'd burned away all the loneliness in her life, about how everything was better when he was there, too, about how she was certain the heart she felt pounding in his chest had to be hers. But she didn't have the right words for any of it, so instead she licked her lips and had just enough time to see his eyes flare with desire before there was no holding back for either of them. 

They collided with the force of all their feelings for each other, tongues and teeth and hands roaming in a frenzy. She yanked his shirt up and off and tossed it aside, and while he shivered in the wind she bent to let her mouth warm his chest. He gripped his hand into her hair and held on, and she felt his prosthetic rest on her hip, trying to bring her near. 

Brienne followed his urging, dragging her tongue one last time over his pebbled nipples before straightening and then it was Jaime's turn to undress her. The shock of the cold air on her back with his molten heat at her front stunned her, gave him time to bend her back enough to kiss his way down her neck, her chest, to take her breast into his mouth and draw out a moan. 

She anchored herself by holding onto his hips, digging her fingers into the tight muscles of his ass. When he switched to her other breast she got to work on his belt, the wet sound of his tongue on her loud in the quiet. 

Once she had his pants undone she pressed her hand against his rigid length, and he groaned into her skin. 

“I thought you didn't want to have sex in public?” he asked, nipping at the side of her breast and thrusting eager into her hand. 

“This isn't in public,” she gasped. He sucked her nipple into his mouth and pulled, his eyes on her from underneath his messy golden hair. She could _feel_ the amused disagreement on his tongue. “Are you really going to argue this?” she snapped and he smiled with her still between his white teeth and her hand squeezed hard around him in urgent response. 

“Help,” he said, fumbling with one hand at her pants while he left a trail of hot kisses back up her body to her jaw. The wind quickly chilled them, leaving small, cold shadows of his mouth. She shivered and he paused, his mouth near her ear. “You're sure this is ok?”

“Don't you dare stop,” she warned him just as she shoved her pants past her hips. His grin against her neck was warm as the sun. 

“I wouldn't dream of it,” he murmured, then he was kneeling down, pulling her pants with him. Brienne steadied herself on the firm curve of his shoulder as he pulled off her shoe and tossed it aside, tugged one of her legs free. He went for the other but she pushed him back a little before he could do more and she knelt with him. His face was a marvel in the moonlight, silver and gold and stunning and she kissed him again as she slid her hands along the round hill of his ass and dragged his pants and underwear down. 

It was Jaime who hesitated then, while Brienne surged against his body, trying to bring him nearer. “Wait, just a second,” he panted. “Lie down for me; I want to see you under the stars.” The grass was soft and a little cold, but she would have lain down in the snow at Winterfell to see the expansive love on his face as he took her in, his gaze traveling from her one bare foot to her eyes. “Ah,” he sighed softly, like he'd finally understood some fundamental truth, and she could no longer ignore the need for him that pulsed with every frantic beat of her heart. 

“Please,” Brienne asked softly, reaching for him, and Jaime sank down into her in a single smooth motion while she cried out with pleasure to the stars twinkling above. 

He thrust in a rhythm as steady and wild as the sky, as the sea and the wind and the flowers all around them. Her leg slipped from around his waist and he lifted it back up. “Don't let go,” he whispered in her ear, the bonfire of his love raging through her. Brienne held on, her fingers melded to the sweat-dotted contour of his shoulders, her legs tight around his hips. 

“I won't,” she promised. She was naked in the meadows, with the moon and her sun above her, and she had never felt more herself than with Jaime's head buried against her chest, Tarth cradling them both as they fell into the stars.

* * *

Once he could think again, Jaime lifted his head up to stare down at Brienne, her skin flushed in the moonlight. Her cheeks were even pinker from the sun she'd gotten that day, and he kissed each one tenderly before pulling out and lying down next to her on the grass. He shivered. 

“You didn't tell me how cold it was,” he said, but when she wrapped her arms around him he didn't feel anything but her. They lay curled into each other, staring up at the sky. 

Brienne lifted one strong arm, her long finger pointing up at the stars. “Do you see that bright one? That's the Evenstar. The guiding star, for ships at sea.” 

He kissed the temple of his Evenstar. “What's that big one?” he asked, pointing at the moon. She snorted against his shoulder and he grinned. 

“Which constellation is your favorite?” 

Jaime had not spent any of his childhood lying out in the night looking at stars, a fact he regretted now. “That one,” he said, pointing to a random collection, “is the Maiden.” He shifted his finger to another grouping next to it. “And that's the Warrior, whom she's obviously in love with.” 

Brienne laughed as bright as the moonlight. “Do you know any at all?”

“I don't. I don't see how people come up with them in the first place. Seems a little silly when there's so many of them,” he admitted. 

“I think it's romantic,” she sighed, her hand drifting back down to his chest. “That some stars, even though they're lightyears apart, can form these shapes while the world spins on.” 

“Well if someone had explained it to me like that as a kid, I would have been a lot more interested.” 

“Only if they could have made them race cars or drivers,” she said, earning a chuckle from Jaime. “How about that one – see those three that form a triangle? The four that form a box, and the other three that form a bow?” Brienne pointed each one out to him, her hand steady in his sight. Following the line of her finger, he could see them. “That's the direwolf.” 

He squinted and the shape took form, the triangle a proud head, the rectangle body, the curved tail. “Huh,” he said, impressed. “I do see it.” 

"Let me find another one," Brienne continued thoughtfully, trapping her tongue in her teeth as she searched the sky. Jaime watched her watching the stars. She smiled and elbowed him gently. "There." With elegant movements she traced out another pattern in the sky. "The actual Maiden." 

"I see her," he murmured. Brienne turned her head enough to realize he was looking at her and her pink cheeks reddened further. Jaime tugged her more tightly against his side, pressing the side of their heads together as they stared upward. "Show me more?" he asked. 

They pointed out constellations to each other – all of his made up to make her laugh – until they were both trembling from the chill. Jaime still didn't want to leave, but Brienne sat up and stretched and hugged herself before she gathered their clothes. They got dressed while they grinned at each other, exchanging occasional brief kisses. 

Jaime drove them home, and in their bed later he pointed out with tender patience the constellations on her skin. This time, the noises she made weren't laughter, but they were just as sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The walnut trick is a real thing F1 driver Fernando Alonso is known for doing. *g* [Here's a video of it](https://youtu.be/OBtKSGvVxw8) on YouTube. Just picture that in a bar and with Brienne.


	40. July (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I've spent my whole life being told to be less,” Brienne said quietly. “Even my father wanted me to be less who I was. Jaime has never asked that of me, not once.” Even during their argument at Riverrun, he'd only wanted her to listen to him more, not be less herself. “I'm not going to let him down now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count keeps creeping up. The deal is, I have a certain number of months left (4 from here) to post plus an epilogue, which would take us to 45. But August is two parts, so that takes us to 46. I'm 99% sure November will be two parts, too, and about 75% that September will go up to two parts, but I think October will be one. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Well, first, I gotta learn to be less wordy but that ship has OBVIOUSLY sailed, so second: it means the final chapter count will be between 46-49. When will we know for sure? In about three weeks when I theoretically finish writing October. Heh. 
> 
> Anyhow, not that anyone cares nor does this impact the story, but in case people are curious about why it keeps going up/will I ever finish the story. I will! It's getting close! But not as close maybe as the chapter count currently suggests, heh.

**Lannister Corp: 74 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 76 pts**

Jaime's actual birthday was its own happy surprise. When he and Brienne arrived at work, there was a huge banner over the front bungalow that said: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOSS in multicolored letters, and balloons tied to every available surface. Brienne looked as surprised as he did, and as pleased. Pia was waiting with her cellphone focused on them, and Asha, Bronn, Podrick, and Garlan came out of the garage holding a wooden board with two big cakes on it in the shape of the numbers of his age: 37. One was blue and one was red, both of them edged in gold, and Jaime felt oddly moved that they'd used both his and Brienne's car colors for his cake. 

“Happy birthday!” Addam said, walking out of the main bungalow and patting Jaime on the back. “We got you cake.”

“I see that.” 

“We figured it was safer to make the cake into your age instead of trying to light that many candles.” 

“Is that an old man joke? Because as I recall, you and I are the same age.” 

Addam grinned. “You're older than me now.” 

“For four months,” Jaime said dryly. “Enjoy it.” 

“I will,” Addam assured him cheerfully. The rest of the crew emerged from all over, until a huge crowd had gathered around. Arya produced a single, racecar-shaped candle and lit it, the flame flickering briefly in the wind before holding steady. On Addam's signal, the entirety of Evenstar Racing – including Selwyn and Elenda, who'd been in the front bungalow with Lollys – sang happy birthday to Jaime. His throat was so tight he could barely blow out the candle, but it was worth suffering through Addam's gentle ribbing while they ate cake and everyone wished him well. Jaime couldn't recall ever having a birthday where he'd felt genuine camaraderie with so many people. 

After that, they were all back to work, with the team's full attention turned towards Lannisport. They were leaving the next day, to give the crew the traditional extra day for parties and preparation. Jaime, unable to reasonably avoid her any longer, had plans to see his Aunt Genna, who had her main home there. 

He and Brienne had talked about it that morning, when he'd received a 'Happy birthday' text from his aunt, and another request to come visit her while they were in the city. 

“I think I should go by myself,” he'd told Brienne over the waffle breakfast she'd woken early to make for him. 

“I don't mind missing the jet ski race,” Brienne had told him too eagerly and he'd laughed a little. 

“Pia will murder me if I pull you away from that, and frankly so will Robb.” Robb had tried and mostly failed Brienne's walnut trick. He'd challenged her to the jet ski race in Lannisport to redeem himself and Pia had suggested she do it, even if she lost, to continue to build goodwill towards their team. Brienne had been complaining about it every day since Robb had asked. 

“That's not the only reason, though,” Jaime had continued. “I don't know where Genna stands on any of this. She's always been different from my father – kinder, for one, and more willing to go against his demands – but with the entire fortune at stake, I don't know who to trust.” Brienne had rubbed her hand soothingly down his arm and he'd shrugged. “I don't want to lead you into what could be an ambush.” 

“I don't want you to go into that alone, either.” 

“Ah, but I'm still a Lannister.” Jaime had put on his best family-approved smile, the one that made him look more like a shark than a man, and he saw the flicker of unease in Brienne's eyes. “Don't worry,” he said, dropping the act and squeezing her hand. “She's old, I can take her.” 

Brienne had smiled, but it hadn't fully banished the worry he saw. 

Thursday morning, after kissing Brienne goodbye at the hotel and wishing her luck in the jet ski race - “try not to make Stark look too much of a fool,” he'd told her – Jaime got in the car his aunt had sent to chauffeur him to her home. He watched the crowds starting to emerge onto the streets of Lannisport, most of them still blinking and looking not-quite-awake even though it was past ten am. Wednesday night was the most docile night of the entire weekend, and it was still a bigger party than any of the other race weekends of the year. He was hoping to convince Brienne to head out with him tonight, at least for a little while, before taking her back to the hotel and convincing her not to leave again except for race-related reasons. 

A Lannister had lived in the palatial estate Genna now owned for as long as the city had been around. It had been built into the hills, with stunning views of the Sunset Sea, and was high and far enough away that you could see the whole of the track when they fully shut the city down to build it. Jaime had come with his family every year to stay during race week, and he had distant, happy memories of running through the grounds with his cousins and sister until the year his mother had died. That year, Jaime hadn't felt much like running at all, and the years after he was always too focused on trying to make his father happy again. 

Jaime had wasted much of his childhood trying to force happiness on his deeply unhappy family. Taking care of Tyrion and throwing himself into racing had been respites from failing to be enough for the father and sister he loved. 

He smoothed down his loose linen shirt when he stepped out of the car and headed for the much cooler interior of the house. His aunt had been a respite at times, too. She was as prickly as any Lannister, but warmer by far than his father, and had always treated him, if not as one of her own children, then as family. For any other Lannister that would be an insult, not a compliment. But with Genna it had always felt like what he thought the word should mean. 

Jaime entered through the back door, pleased to see she'd kept things mostly as he remembered them. The last time he'd been here had been his first year back in F1 with Lannister Corp. He'd been sullen and she'd tried to feed him pancakes to make him feel better. Jaime grinned when he saw a stack of them sitting on the kitchen table now. 

“Aunt Genna?” he called out, peering down one hallway and then another. 

“A moment,” she called back from the front room. Jaime headed that way, and caught her kissing a young man Jaime didn't know swiftly on the mouth before shooing him out the door. When she turned, Jaime lifted his eyebrows in question and she just lifted her chin imperiously back. 

“Who was that?” Jaime asked. 

“None of your business, nephew. Come give your favorite aunt a hug.” 

He did, wrapping his arms around her solid body. Her familiar, rich floral scent surrounded him. Jaime remembered it vividly from the dark days after his mother had died, when the most welcoming arms in his family had been hers. “My only aunt,” he reminded her lightly now, as was their way. “Where am I in the nephew rankings these days?” he asked as he stepped back again, though she held onto his hand when he did. 

“For how much you've been ignoring me, you've dropped at least three places.” 

“I shall do my best to earn them back.” He kissed the top of her hand and she shook her head, smiling a little.

“You always were far too charming on top of your handsomeness. Come on, I made you pancakes.” 

He followed her back to the enormous kitchen. “_You_ made them?” he asked, genuinely curious. 

“I had pancakes made for you,” she amended. “Stop being a smartass and sit.” 

They both did, Jaime grabbing two and his aunt taking a few of her own. He poured syrup over them and inhaled deeply before taking a bite. “Delicious as always,” he said. “My compliments to the chef.” 

“I'll tell him.”

“Was that him I saw you bidding goodbye?”

Genna shot him a quick, warning look. “You're not charming enough for that conversation, Jaime Lannister.” 

“My full name? He must be quite the young man. How is Uncle Emmon?” 

_If looks could kill_, Jaime thought, when Genna gave him a baleful stare. “Your uncle is well and on travel, as usual,” she said tightly. Sometimes it seemed a miracle they'd had any children, let alone four. “I'll give him your regards. I had hoped to meet your young lady myself.”

“She's racing jet skis in the Sunset Sea against Robb Stark.” 

Genna sighed. “I understand all the nonsense around racing, but I'll never like it.” Genna had always been interested in only the more serious parts of Formula 1: the running of the business and the intricacies of budgeting for a nine-month roadshow every year. His father had never entrusted her with as much responsibility as she'd always wanted, though whenever she had been around, Jaime had been impressed by her abilities. Tywin treated his sister the same way he treated his daughter, and it was impossible to miss how much it aggravated both of them. The difference was Genna had never been willing to bend to Tywin’s more soulless wishes, and Cersei was. 

Jaime just hoped that was still true of Genna. 

“How is Tion doing?” she asked.

“He's smart and he picked things up quickly. He adjusted well to the pit crew.” 

“Thank you for giving him the opportunity,” she said. “You know how Tywin is about hiring drop-outs.” 

Tywin had expounded at length about Tion dropping out of college when it had happened, how it was the sign of a weak character, how he'd wasted Lannister money – an ironic complaint now, Jaime thought – and even went so far as to drag Genna through the mud, too, for not forcing him to stay the course. Jaime couldn't blame the boy for doing it; he'd let his domineering mother urge him into a business major and Tion had about as much interest in that as Jaime did. He'd followed Jaime around like a lost puppy at every family event for years, asking questions about racing. When Jaime had called him to ask about working for Evenstar Racing he thought the younger man would never stop thanking him. 

“How are _you_ doing?” Genna asked, watching him over the top of her glass of what was either sparkling water or champagne, though Jaime strongly suspected the latter. She may have been one of the only good Lannisters, but she still had the shrewd green eyes of his father.

“I'm good,” he said, and she looked genuinely surprised. 

“Are you really? Even after... everything?”

“Everything meaning finding the love of my life and an exciting new career?”

Genna's eyes lit up. “Love of your life? Those are big words.” 

“It's true,” he stated, his tone firm. He wasn't interested in talking about his love life with his aunt, either. 

“I've read all the articles and seen the pictures of the two of you. We all have.” There was a discordant note to her tone that made Jaime sit up straighter. 

“Have you?” he asked, taking a drink of his own water. “What did everyone think?”

“_I_ am thrilled for you; you seem happier than I think I've ever seen you,” she said. “But your father seems rather put out by the whole thing. I suppose having to give up his son and his LST to her would do that.” 

Taking a large bite of pancake to give himself time to think, Jaime studied his aunt. From his discussions with Tyrion, neither of them was sure who in the family knew about the bankruptcy ledge they were standing on and what Tywin had tried to do to pull back from it. Jaime hoped Genna didn't know, but she was as good at subterfuge as most Lannisters. “My father dislikes a lot of choices I make,” he said casually. 

“He's a difficult man,” she agreed. “He's always been a difficult man, and he's only gotten worse as he's grown older. I won't give you platitudes that he's like that for any good reason.” 

“Not even how running the Lannister Corp Racing empire is bound to be difficult?” Jaime hedged. 

Genna snorted. “If I were in charge of it, do you think I'd turn into Tywin Lannister?” Jaime huffed a wry laugh and shook his head. “No, there's something more going on. Something about that terrible business with Martyn.” Genna touched his prosthetic hand gently. “I was so sorry to hear about it when it happened.”

“Not sorry enough to visit, though,” he said, wishing the words had landed with less weight. 

“That's fair,” his aunt said quietly, and when he really looked at her, he noticed her make-up was less successful than ever at hiding the lines in her face. He wasn't the only one getting older. “It was... strongly encouraged that we let you recover in peace.” 

“By my father.”

“Yes,” she said, though it hadn't been a question. She set her fork down and so did he; neither of them had eaten much. “I know the company is in trouble. I didn't know until a few months ago, but I'm not the idiot Tywin thinks I am.”

“Is that why you texted Brienne back in February?”

“No.” Her broad face managed to look small and contrite. “I saw you two on the interview and wanted to congratulate you on getting an entire new team started. I reached out to her because I was afraid you'd be mad at me for not having visited you in the hospital.”

“I was mad at you.” He thought, perhaps, he might be still, but he didn't know anymore. “Why didn't you fight my father? His demands never stopped you before.” 

“Sometimes they did. He controls more of the Lannister fortune than you know. Tywin could rip the lifestyle away from any one of us. The homes of a few of us.” 

Jaime looked around his aunt's expensive kitchen. “This estate.” 

“The company owns it,” she admitted. “It would bring in a good amount if he sold it for a cash infusion.” 

“The rest of the family would riot.” 

“Perhaps. But they've grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, too, and they're not the ones who live here.” 

Jaime's natural hand curled into a loose fist. “He'll ruin any fucking thing to save Lannister Corp, won't he? Even me.” Under her thick makeup, his aunt went pale. “He bet against me last year, and when I couldn't lose right, he hired Vargo Hoat to make sure I did.” 

“Jaime.” She reached out and touched his prosthesis again with trembling fingers. “No, that can't be.”

It was a relief to see her genuine horror, to know that the woman that had been the closest thing he'd had to a mother for most of his life hadn't betrayed him. A knot he'd been carrying in his chest for months loosened and Jaime could breathe a little more. “It is. And you should know: we're not content to just take the LST from him. We intend to beat him in the championship this year and take him – take Lannister Corp – as far down as we can.” 

“He'll never allow it.”

“He doesn't have a choice. Lancel can't beat Brienne playing fair, and we've got protection in place to keep Tywin from making things unfair.” 

“Does he know what you intend?”

“He does now.” 

Genna exhaled, loud and resigned. “Then Brienne is in trouble.”

Jaime shook his head, but the pancake he'd eaten turned to concrete in his stomach. “Not on the track.” 

“You think he'll stop at the track? If he was willing to put his own son in danger?”

“He can't do anything dangerous to her,” Jaime insisted fiercely. “He'd be arrested immediately and even he wouldn't bring that shame on the family.” 

“There's more trouble he can cause than physical. Things that would be difficult to connect to him; things they wouldn't arrest him for.” 

“Are you aware of anything?”

“No. Just that he's furious. Kevan might, though. He still follows Tywin around like he's a toddler, hero-worshipping his older brother. If I find out anything, I'll tell you.” 

“Thank you,” Jaime said sincerely. He covered her hand with his good one and squeezed. “Whatever you can do, we're grateful.” 

“I do what I can to help my favorite nephew,” she said, and her voice was thick. 

“I jumped back up,” Jaime teased her. 

“For now. But next time I want to meet Brienne.” 

“Come down to the track tomorrow. You know Father always finds practice boring, and our garage is at the far end of the track, you won't have to see him at all.” 

“Won't it look suspicious if I visit the Evenstar Garage?”

“It would look more suspicious if you didn't. He knows how close we are; if he doesn't see you down there, he'll make the correct assumption we met here.” 

“And better a public meeting than a private one. We'll have to pretend we didn't see each other today.” 

“We're Lannisters,” Jaime said with a rueful smile. “We're all far too good at pretending.” 

“I'll drink to that,” she agreed. They lifted their glasses towards each other and took a drink.

* * *

When Brienne returned to the hotel, wet and annoyed after the jet ski race with Robb, Jaime was in the room already, typing away on his laptop as she opened the door. 

“Hey,” he said, smiling warmly. “Did you beat him?”

“No,” she said. She sounded grumpy even to herself, and the amused twitch of Jaime's lips didn't help.

“You mean we've found a vehicle even Brienne Tarth can't conquer?”

“It's not a vehicle,” she huffed in his general direction. She opened the closet, pulling out one of the absurdly fluffy hotel robes; at least their decision to splurge for a fancier hotel in Lannisport as a reward for the team was having unexpected benefits. Her skin was cold and clammy and she needed a hot bath and some time alone to pout. 

Brienne walked into the huge bathroom and turned on the faucets to draw a bath. She felt more than heard Jaime in the doorway, looked up to see he was leaning against it, arms folded over his chest, that same amusement on his face. “Boats are vehicles,” he informed her.

“I know boats are vehicles,” she snapped. “I grew up on an island.” 

His brows lifted a little. “You really are mad you lost to him, aren't you?”

“I grew up on an island,” she said again. 

Jaime nodded in understanding. “Ah, I see. You feel like you've let down your heritage. Disappointed the ancestors, who hold jet ski racing in such high regard.” His face and voice were overly serious, his eyes twinkling. 

“Shut up,” she muttered, testing the bath water. But she already felt more relaxed. “I plan to challenge him to something else, I just have to find the right thing.”

“He's from Winterfell, so what about ice sculpture?” Brienne snorted, and Jaime came over to sit next to her on the edge of the bath, apparently sensing he'd smoothed her ruffled fur. “Or a Stark favorite: glaring with dour judgment at someone else? You'd be good at that.” She glared at him and he smiled brightly at her. “See? Perfect.”

“You're very annoying.”

“But you love me anyway.”

“I do,” she said, and it was impossible to miss the way his features softened with pleasure. It was easy to forget sometimes, with his looks and his charm, that Jaime was often as hungry for love and assurance as she was. Brienne kissed him, soft and warm, and resisted the urge to turn up the heat. “Go finish your work while I soak away my petulant anger.”

“I could help. The tub is big enough for both of us,” he said hopefully. 

“You promised the team we'd all go out to a party together, and we have to get ready.” 

“Past me was an idiot,” Jaime said, kissing her chin, her jaw. 

“He was, but now present you has to deal with it.” 

“Fine, my stubborn Wrench,” he sighed, his breath tickling her ear. “But only so future me can fuck you all night later.” She shivered a little and when he pulled away, his grin was smug. 

“Get out,” she ordered him with mock sternness and he sauntered out of the bathroom, clearly aware she was ogling his ass the whole way.

* * *

The entire team was late to free practice the next morning. 

Jaime had kept his promise to Brienne, starting the moment the door closed behind them on their return to the room. She'd been teasing him all night at the club, had enjoyed watching him grow slowly more agitated as she'd shifted her hand up his thigh under their table, when she'd whispered in his ear on the shuttle back to the hotel. Brienne had wanted to push him and he'd welcomed it; she'd welcomed it, too, when he turned her to face the room's entry wall and pressed his entire, straining body against her back to whisper in her ear, “Now it's my turn.” 

She suspected most of the rest of the team were suffering from entirely different hangovers, though, based on the bleary eyes and faces scrunched against the light when they all gathered in the lobby to get on the bus. At least she was only mildly sore and her driver suit hid all but one of the suspiciously shaped marks Jaime's mouth had left on her neck. 

Jaime didn't seem embarrassed at all by the ones she'd left on him, the neck of his polo shirt unbuttoned what seemed an unnecessary amount to show where she'd applied herself with such enthusiasm to his collarbone. It was worth it for Bronn's resonant snort of disgust, though. 

“You two need to be hosed down,” he grumbled. Jaime grinned at him but Bronn narrowed his eyes at Brienne. “You're as bad as he is.” 

She opened her mouth to protest, but it wasn't like Jaime had ever had to talk her into it; and in fact at least one of their sessions last night had been entirely her doing, though Jaime had been rather noisily appreciative. Brienne flushed red and Bronn's sigh was loud and resigned. 

“Get on the damn bus,” he said, waving them onward. “Try to keep your hands to yourselves for five minutes.” 

“Never,” Jaime insisted, holding Brienne's hand.

On their way to the track, as Jaime was twisted around in his seat to talk to Arya and Garlan sitting behind them, Brienne pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach. After her bath the night before, while she and Jaime had gotten ready for the team outing, he had told her about his visit to his aunt, including that she wanted to meet Brienne today at practice. Though Jaime had reassured her that his aunt was very different from the rest of his family, she couldn't help wondering if that was only true in regards to how she treated Jaime. Brienne's experience with the elder Lannisters suggested they were insular and defensive to an alarming degree; just because Genna liked Jaime didn't mean she'd like Brienne. 

Brienne was certain Jaime wouldn't side with his aunt over her, but she didn't want to cause him any more strife with his family than she already had. When they arrived at the drop off point, she held back, gesturing for Jaime and the others to go on, and waited for Addam, who'd been sitting near the back. 

“Hey,” she said as he stepped off the bus. “Can I talk to you?”

Addam's easy smile slipped a little, but he nodded and motioned for Podrick – still green around the gills this morning – to shuffle off with the crowd. Brienne waved goodbye to Sandor and then she and Addam started the long walk towards the garage. 

Because the Lannisport Grand Prix track was set up in the middle of the city, the paddock and the pits had to be separated, a shuttle ride away from each other. Given their late start, the Evenstar Team had opted to head straight for the garage, but that meant Sandor had had to drop them off at one of the far entrances, and they had a long walk in a morning that was already warm. Brienne took a big lungful of the salt air, and the tang of it was familiar, the underlying scent of oil and rubber comforting. There were people everywhere, and neither she nor Addam blended into a crowd very well, so they spent their first minutes getting to the official teams' gate being stopped every few feet for photos and autographs. 

It was astonishing to Brienne how swiftly many fans had changed their attitude towards her once she'd regularly started placing high mid-field. Nearly as many men as women approached her on their journey, and none of them made snide comments. Though she suspected that had something to do with Addam being there, too, because she didn't miss the handful of long-distance dirty looks she still received. Addam didn't seem to miss them, either, because when one group of four clearly drunk men started heading their way with trouble in their eyes, Addam gave them an intimidating glare that Jaime would have been proud of. The men seemed to think better of whatever they'd had planned, and altered their course to swagger by without stopping. Brienne was certain she heard the word “cunt,” and she glanced at Addam to gauge his reaction. 

He held his fingers together an inch apart and said, “Dick size,” and she laughed. If Jaime had been there, there was no telling what kind of response he would have had, but it likely would not have been Addam's easy brush-off. At Volantis last month, when some random fan had shouted out “Drive my stick, bitch!” as they'd walked by, Jaime had turned on his heel so swiftly she hadn't registered it until he was in the man's face asking if he'd like to repeat himself. The man had not. Brienne was almost positive Jaime wouldn't physically assault anyone anymore for whatever slights they threw at her, but it was the _almost_ that gave her pause. 

“What did you want to talk about?” Addam asked her once they were safely in the teams-only area. 

“Jaime's aunt is going to come to practice today,” she told him. 

“Genna?” Brienne nodded, and Addam laughed a little. “I haven't seen her in... gods, literally decades.”

“What's she like?”

“Big,” Addam said. 

Brienne frowned. “You mean in size?”

“Attitude. If she's anything like she was, she fills up a room with her presence. You'll like her.” 

“Do you think she'll like me?” 

Addam peered at her, and smiled softly. “You're worried about meeting the family. Understandable, they're not a great bunch. Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I would have thought Jaime was Genna's son, instead of Tywin's. She's still sharper than Jaime – don't let her fool you on that front – but of all of Tytos' kids, she's the best. Jaime used to talk up the other uncle, whatever his name was, but I never met him.” 

“You haven't answered my question,” Brienne said pointedly. 

“Because I don't know the answer,” he admitted. “Genna is Genna. Do I _think_ she'll like you? Absolutely. But the number of people I'd answer 'no' to the question of whether they'd like you, I can count on one hand. Just be you, Brienne, and you'll be fine.” 

She squeezed Addam's arm and he patted her hand gently. “I'm trusting you,” she said solemnly. 

He grinned, quick and amused. “You have excellent instincts.” 

They were nearing the garage, and Jaime, hovering at the edges, started walking their way. He was smiling, but Brienne could see the worry lines between his brows. 

“What took you two so long?” Jaime asked when he was closer. 

“Waylaid by adoring fans,” Addam said. “But I didn't want to disappoint them, so I signed every scrap of paper.” 

Jaime rolled his eyes, but not before she saw him look her over, like he was searching for damage. “I assume you were the one they were after,” he said to her. 

“Yes. But it was fine. I'm fine,” she told him meaningfully, and Jaime exhaled with a little more force than necessary. 

“I need to talk to Bronn,” Addam said. He tapped the side of his head at Brienne's curious look. “Instincts.” 

“What did he mean by that?” Jaime asked. 

“Don't worry about it. Why do you look so nervous?”

“That obvious?” She nodded. “It took you a lot longer than it should have. I was worried my father had done something to you on the way.”

“Jaime. He's not going to leap out at me in a crowd.” 

“He might have someone else do it.” 

Her first instinct was to make a joke of it, but Jaime looked so serious, she couldn't. “I can take care of myself, and I had Addam with me.”

“I know.” He shoved his hand through his hair, scratching his head and leaving it messy. “I know,” he repeated. “But I'd feel better if we could get you some security, just while you're at the track. It's not that unusual, most of the other drivers do it.” 

“How about if we see if Sandor will? He's always complaining about how bored he is on race days. I trust him, and I'm sure he'll be glad to earn some extra money.” 

Jaime gestured for her to walk the rest of the way with him to the garage. “He'd probably do it for free.” 

“He's not _that_ bored.”

“That's not why,” Jaime said with a small, fond smile. “It's because it's you.” 

“Don't be silly,” she said, but the pleasant glow saw her through the first practice session. They were on break between practices when a sonorous woman's voice carried through the garage. 

“Where's my son?” she called. Brienne turned from the screen she was looking at with Arya, and saw an older woman, square-shaped and proud, with loose hair silver-blond with age. She was dressed in a floral-patterned sundress that flowed all around her, making her look like she was floating as she entered. “Tion!”

“Oh gods,” Willem said from nearby, and Genna – for it could only be her, the eyes alone marked her as a Lannister, and her nose looked so much like Jaime's – turned her head sharply towards him. 

“Willem Lannister,” she boomed, “come greet your aunt.” 

Willem wrinkled his nose but did as he was bid, and Brienne watched her swoop him into her arms, smush him against her soft body, and kiss him soundly on each cheek. 

“My third favorite nephew,” she said. 

“Aunt Genna,” Willem said. “My favorite aunt.” 

“That's right.” She glanced over at Brienne, and her shrewd eyes reminded Brienne more of Tyrion or Tywin than Jaime. 

“Mother,” Tion said, hurrying from the back. “What are you doing here?” He sounded horrified, and Brienne couldn't entirely blame him. Few people wanted a surprise visit from their parent at work. 

Genna gave Brienne one more considering look and then turned to her son, doing the same swoop-smush-kiss as she'd done for Willem. “Coming to see my family. How are you, darling? Eating well? Sleeping enough? You've been in town two days and haven't come to see your own mother, so you can imagine I've been worried.” 

“I'm fine.” Even though he was only a couple of years younger than Brienne was, Tion had always seemed much younger, and his awkward, hunched shoulders in the face of his mother's hovering nosiness made him look like a child. 

“Leave the boy alone,” Jaime said, striding from the back, too, “we've been busy. It's good to see you, Aunt Genna. Give your favorite nephew a hug.” 

Brienne watched the two of them play their agreed-upon lies that they hadn't seen each other yet. Pleasantries were exchanged and then Jaime gestured for Brienne to join them. With a deep breath, she did. 

“Aunt Genna, this is Evenstar's driver, and my girlfriend, Brienne Tarth.” 

Brienne held out her hand and Genna took it. The skin of the other woman's palm was soft, but her grip was firm. “It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am,” Brienne said. 

Genna lifted one perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “Ma'am? You might as well call me 'Dowager.'”

“Except your husband is still perfectly alive,” Jaime said dryly. 

“Indeed he is,” Genna said, and she didn't sound entirely happy about it. She turned her head and called, “Wat!” 

A man around Brienne's age sauntered into the garage and stood close and familiar next to Genna. He had a shock of deep black hair, liquid brown eyes, and a charming smile. 

“Your young man,” Jaime said, and though his tone was light, he looked annoyed. 

“Not mine,” Genna said. “Yours for a little while. My dear friend Wat here would love a tour of the paddock. I promised him that my favorite nephew would be happy to do it.” 

“Quite a presumption. We're busy.”

“Not too busy for your beloved, elderly aunt's friend, surely?” 

Brienne glanced back and forth between the two Lannisters, their golden heads tilted in opposite directions as they considered each other with calculating stares. Whatever Jaime saw in his aunt, he nodded sharply and held his hand out to Wat. 

“Of course. Any friend of my aunt's is a friend of mine.” 

Brienne had never believed anything he'd said less. She stepped forward and shook Wat's hand after Jaime was done. “It will be our pleasure,” she said. 

“Oh, no, dear,” Genna said airily. “You'll be giving me a tour of the garage and track.”

Suddenly, Brienne realized what Genna had done, and when she looked at Jaime she saw he'd known since Wat had stepped into the garage. “I have a second practice in a little while,” she tried, but Genna waved it off. 

“You drove FP1 so you're free to enter the race now. Someone else can drive your car if we're not back in time.” 

“We don't have any other licensed test drivers,” Brienne tried again. 

“Then we better get started so you don't miss it! Come on, my dear, I love walking the track between sessions.” 

Brienne looked helplessly over at Jaime and he smiled ruefully. “Aunt Genna is a force of nature, Wrench, but she's good company. She knows a surprising amount about the business of Formula 1. I think you might learn a lot from her.” It was easy to read his underlying message:_ go with her, it will be okay. _

“All right,” Brienne said slowly. “If you want to walk the track, we should get started now while it's open.” Genna fell into step next to Brienne as they walked out into the sunlight. “What--”

“We can talk once we're out on the track,” Genna said, cheerful and determined, and Brienne's mouth shut again. 

Saved from having to converse for a couple of minutes, Brienne paid attention to the shape and length of the pit lane exit, how far away the next turn was and its embankment. These nuances were different at every track in Formula 1, and learning them via simulator only helped when you also confirmed them with your feet. In truth, Brienne loved doing track walks, both back when she was Jaime's race engineer and now as a driver. Tracks were often built or adjusted right before a Grand Prix, and, except for Dorne, a driver only ever spent three days a year at any one track. Lannisport was trickier than most, given how heavily it relied on a good qualifying position and a consistent run on a notoriously narrow and twisty course. Every extra step now, even with Genna Lannister hovering at her side, would only help Brienne. 

The bay was not far from here, and seagulls cried out to each other over the sounds of the crowds meandering along the track's sides. It was busy on the other side of the fences, but Brienne and Genna were the only ones on the track itself right now. She could feel people watching them from the windows of the apartments that lined the streets. There would be pictures of them all over social media, she was sure. 

“You're dating my nephew,” Genna said once they'd gotten a quarter of the way out in silence. They were following the direction the cars would take, and they were surrounded on all sides by buildings now. 

“I am,” Brienne said. 

“He cares for you.” 

“I care for him, too.” 

“Mm.” Genna peered around. “I hate what this city has become,” she sighed. “They've let the Grand Prix and the money define them. We used to have pride in our city and now it's all overly fancy apartments and ridiculous tourist boutiques. Why do you love my nephew?”

Brienne stumbled a little with the sudden subject change. “What?”

“Why do you love my nephew? His money, his appearance? The driving?”

_Ah_, Brienne thought, realizing the subject had not changed that dramatically at all. But she had no idea how to explain to Genna all the things she loved about Jaime. “He's a good man,” she said. 

Genna eyed her briefly. “That's a good answer.”

“What did you expect me to say?” Brienne asked, her tone sharp. 

Genna's smile was genuine. “That's a better answer,” she said. She tucked her arm through Brienne's. “You do have some fight in you. Good. You'll need it.” 

“I've needed it my whole life,” Brienne said, keeping her arm stiff. 

“All women do. Doesn't mean they have it, though, and if you're going to be a Lannister, you'll need more than most.” 

Like she'd stepped into a pit of boiling water, Brienne felt red-hot embarrassment wash over her. “Jaime and I haven't talked about that,” she mumbled. 

“I'm sure he'll let you keep your last name.”

“No, I mean, we haven't talked about marriage.”

“What, really?” The weight of Genna's surprise was almost too much and Brienne stared down the track. They were on the initial big straight, heading into the first, gentle left curve. She automatically calculated the best approach, eyed the peak of the apex. It was soothing to go through the motions of it, to try not think about everything that hinged on her beating Lancel.

“Did... did Jaime say something?” Brienne asked anyway, half-hoping and half-fearing what the answer would be. She wanted nothing more than to know for certain, and surely Genna wouldn't have brought it up if she'd asked and he'd said no.

“He didn't have to _say_ anything, dear girl. I have a woman's intuition about these things.” 

“Oh.” Some of the hope seeped out of her. “Is that all you wanted?” Brienne asked as they neared the start of the curve. “To talk to me about Jaime?”

“No. You seem the type who appreciates honesty, so I'll be honest with you: I think your idea is foolish at best, dangerous at worst. You should talk Jaime out of it.” 

Brienne swallowed. It was hot out on the asphalt in her driver's suit, sweat beading along her back, and she pulled her arm out of Genna's to unzip the suit and shrug it off her shoulders so it flopped down at the waist. The Nomex shirt wasn't cool, but it was better than wearing both. Genna re-engaged her arm immediately after.

“That's not a response,” Genna said, amused. 

“What idea are you talking about?” Brienne hedged. 

“Your unrealistic plan to take down Lannister Corp by defeating them in the Constructor standings.” 

“We're ahead of them now.”

“Lancel had a freakishly bad pit stop. That certainly won't happen again.”

Brienne felt trapped by the slight pressure of the other woman hanging onto her. “It doesn't have to, I can still beat him.” 

“Say you do. What happens then? Tywin Lannister quietly slinks off, defeated?”

They were on the exit of the curve, where Brienne would be accelerating out, preparing for the next hard right and a brief straight after. “Lannister Corp will be bankrupted. We don't care what happens after that.” 

“You should,” Genna said, her voice steel. “Because Tywin will. He's not a man to sit on revenge.” 

“What would you have us do?” Brienne asked, despair and anger swirling together. “We're not going to give up now. I'm doing this for Jaime. Did he tell you what his own father did?” 

“Yes,” Genna said, the word weighty with sadness. “And Tywin cares far less for you than he does Jaime.”

Brienne had had that thought herself many times. “I don't care. I want to do this. I will do this.” 

Genna sighed and patted Brienne's arm. “I think perhaps you have too much fight, Brienne Tarth. But if you're Jaime's, then I should have expected no less. He waited so long to fall in love, of course it would be with someone as remarkable as he is.” The older woman smiled ruefully. “I'd just hate to see any harm come to someone Jaime cares so much about.” 

“We know what Tywin is capable of. We're taking precautions.” 

“Jaime told me all about it, and I'll keep an eye out on my end as well, help as much as I can. I don't know how helpful it will be, but you seem resolute. I suppose I just wanted to test your resolve myself,” Genna sighed. “To be honest, I'd hoped you would be a little less... you.” 

“I've spent my whole life being told to be less,” Brienne said quietly. “Even my father wanted me to be less who I was. Jaime has never asked that of me, not once.” Even during their argument at Riverrun, he'd only wanted her to listen to him more, not be less herself. “I'm not going to let him down now.” 

“Well.” Genna squeezed Brienne's hand. “Then I wish you both luck in your quest. When the time comes, if you do beat Tywin, make sure I'm one of your first calls after. I have very good lawyers.” 

Brienne smiled a little, but Genna didn't look like she was kidding.

* * *

The rest of their walk was entirely pleasant. Genna turned the talk to tales of Jaime as a child that had Brienne laughing and making notes of things to ask him about later. Then she gently got Brienne to talk of her own childhood on Tarth. As they walked the length of the track that hugged the coastline, Brienne told Genna about her brother Galladon, the sea calm and sparkling at her side. 

By the time they were heading back towards the garages, it was nearly time for the second free practice, and Genna had thoroughly dissected their current testing budget, coming up with a smart new approach that Brienne tabled to discuss with Jaime, Addam, and her father when they were back home. 

Jaime and Wat had returned, too, though it did not appear they had bonded at all. Wat was sitting sullenly glaring at his sandaled feet in the corner and Jaime had his arms folded over his chest and was glaring at Brienne's car. 

“Hi,” Brienne said curiously. Genna walked over to Wat and he stood when she approached; they shared a whispered conversation. “What happened there?”

“Incompatible personalities,” Jaime said. When Brienne just kept staring at him, he shrugged. “I didn't like how he was talking about my aunt.” 

Brienne ran her hands over his hair. Her ruffled lion. “That's why you're her favorite nephew,” she said, and Jaime smirked a little. 

“How about you two?” 

She glanced over at Genna, who patted Wat on the shoulder and then turned her back on him and didn't hide her eye-roll. Brienne laughed a little. “She's very upfront,” she said. 

“So you got along?” 

“We did.”

“Good. I'm glad she likes you. I was fairly sure she would, but sometimes people surprise you.” 

Brienne pressed her hand to his cheek. “She loves you a lot.” Jaime's face softened with happiness. 

“Thank you for the lovely tour, Brienne,” Genna said, floating over to them. “Wat and I must be on our way. He's got a performance tonight, he's a singer-songwriter.” 

“That sounds wonderful,” Brienne said, hoping they wouldn't be invited to watch him. 

“Hope you had a memorable time,” Jaime said through his teeth. 

Wat's tanned skin paled and he nodded quickly. 

Genna shot her nephew a pursed-lip glare before kissing him on the cheek. She paused to whisper something so quietly in his ear Brienne couldn't hear it, but whatever it was, it made Jaime's cheeks go pink under his short beard. 

“What did she say to you?” Brienne asked Jaime once Genna had made the rounds of the other Lannisters – admonishing Tion one last time to stop by before he left for Tarth again. 

The other cars were already pulling out onto the track with their familiar whines, and the Evenstar crew bustled all around, but there was something magnetically confident in the look Jaime gave her. “She was just reminding me of something I already knew,” he mused. “Come on, Wrench, time to get back out there. Lots of weekend left.” 

Though the second practice went well – and that evening Jaime made love to her so tenderly she was overwhelmed with it – engine difficulties at qualifying put her starting position at P-8. For this track, that was almost a disaster, especially when Lancel came in at P-2. 

Lannisport always sent the drivers in individual cars for parade, so she didn't run into Lancel until weigh-in. When she walked in, he looked over immediately, his whole body tense and unwelcoming. 

“What's up with him?” she asked Loras quietly. Whenever there was gossip about the other drivers, Loras would know it, and share it.

“Utterly destroyed by his uncle, your former employer. Rumor has it if he doesn't do well before the summer break, he won't be coming back afterward.” 

Brienne blinked in shock. “Who would they replace him with? They don't even have a test driver.”

“Knowing Tywin Lannister, he'd try to buy one of the other drivers out from under one of our teams. How do you think I'd look in Lannister red?” 

Renly, who'd been standing nearby half-listening, turned his head sharply. “Thinking of changing allegiances, Loras?”

There was a tension there that Brienne didn't understand, except to know it wasn't about Loras' casual joke. 

“Would you even notice if I did?” Loras asked, biting the words off in quiet chunks. Renly glanced up at Brienne and then turned away again, his face drawn. Loras didn't look much better, his hands clenching the edge of his helmet. 

“Everything all right?” Brienne asked, lowering her voice even more. Renly stalked off to get weighed in himself.

“Just be glad you don't have to drive with Jaime,” Loras muttered, and then he followed after Renly.

The tension of the weigh-in room settled into Brienne's shoulders, and no matter how many times she stretched her neck this way and that, how many deep breaths she took, she was still clenched and awkward in the car by the time it was lights out. Though she managed to accelerate down the first straight to P-5, she crossed the checkered flag in the end at fourth position – two behind Lancel, who had easily driven his most focused and dedicated race of the season. Maybe of his life. 

“We're behind again,” Brienne sighed when she met Jaime in the parc fermé. She tugged off her headgear and shoved the balaclava inside her helmet. 

“We knew this wouldn't be easy. Besides, we're only four points behind,” he assured her. “We've got this.” 

They watched Lancel climb out of his car and remove his own helmet, but he didn't look happy, only relieved, the look of a man whose future had been riding on a single result. She knew that feeling well. On the podium later, as he clutched his champagne bottle to his chest, he seemed unable to look anywhere but at Tywin Lannister, standing tall and very still in the red sea of cheering Lannister Corp crew. Tywin didn't look happy, either; he looked intent and dangerous. When his head swiveled and found her immediately in the crowd, Brienne felt a chill of fear steal down her back, and she shivered under the afternoon sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Monaco does free practice on Thursdays. Lannisport does not. Just in case that was bothering you.


	41. August (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne's feet pounded down the smoothed-out dirt path. Her breathing was hard but steady, her body flushed and burning and ready. She'd need to turn back soon so she didn't wear herself out before the race. Though she sat for two hours while driving her Formula One car, the amount of physical effort it took to do it was like running through an endurance course, especially on her neck. 
> 
> She heard a car approaching from behind and decided once it passed she'd pick that as her arbitrary turnaround point, but it slowed as it neared. Brienne glanced over, saw a black luxury sedan with fully tinted windows keeping time. When she slowed to a walk and then stopped, so did it. 
> 
> The back passenger-side window rolled down. “Brienne Tarth,” a cold, familiar voice floated out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eternal gratitude to Brynn for her stellar beta work and friendship, as always.

**Lannister Corp: 92 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 88 pts**

Even in August, Pyke was gray. It seemed incapable of shaking the clouds that lingered ever near, though Theon had promised during the post-qualifying media scrum on Saturday afternoon that Pyke had plenty of cloudless days and they were the most beautiful skies in all of Westeros. When Sunday morning of race day dawned bright and blue, it looked determined to prove him right. 

Brienne woke early with nerves in her stomach, as she did on every race day. She hadn't thrown up after the first time, but the jumpy fluttering in her belly was there the morning of each race anyway, and a little worse today than most. Four points down was better by far than it had been, but it hurt more when they'd been ahead after Winterfell. _I can do better_, Brienne told herself firmly, pressing her fingers to her stomach. She got up, got ready, and went downstairs to get rid of the nerves the same way she had since Gulltown: with a morning run around whatever city she was in. Pyke had dramatic cliffs stretching from one end of the island to another, and there was a trail not too far from their hotel that traveled at least part of the coastline. Brienne had spotted it when they'd bussed in, and she'd wandered down to check it out Friday afternoon after practice. 

She preferred these smaller locations on the schedule to the overwrought events like they had at Lannisport, Volantis, and the Eyrie. The smaller Grands Prix still drew enormous crowds, still had fan events and media swarms, but once you were out of the bubble of the race it was almost normal. The Evenstar team was staying a fair distance from the track at a small inn that they'd rented out just for themselves. It meant they all had to get up earlier, but Brienne was grateful for the quiet and the solitude as she headed out into the cheerful morning. 

Though Pyke was an island, it was nothing like Tarth. The other Iron Islands provided some protection from the worst of the northern winds and water, but not enough that Pyke could entirely avoid the eons of beatings, and the land showed it in the rips and jagged edges of its shores. Even on a quiet morning like this one, the waves were loud as they crashed against the rocks at the foot of the cliff to her side. She was running north, into a steady breeze that cooled her sweat as it appeared, and her pace was good enough that she kept running past when she normally would have. With the wind at her back on the return, she knew she'd have plenty of time left for breakfast. 

There were no cars on the road that paralleled the running path, and no people on the path either. Brienne felt easy in the solitude with the waves roaring below and the seabirds calling high overhead. She had no regrets living with Jaime – would far rather wake up to him having stolen all the covers in the night than ever to be perfectly cocooned alone again – but it was nice to be away from everyone, even him, occasionally. The media was a constant presence in her life now, either through giving interviews or Pia's ever-present phone camera, and she felt their scrutiny and judgment falling off of her back with every step forward.

Brienne's feet pounded down the smoothed-out dirt path. Her breathing was hard but steady, her body flushed and burning and ready. She'd need to turn back soon so she didn't wear herself out before the race. Though she sat for two hours while driving her Formula One car, the amount of physical effort it took to do it was like running through an endurance course, especially on her neck. 

She heard a car approaching from behind and decided once it passed she'd pick that as her arbitrary turnaround point, but it slowed as it neared. Brienne glanced over, saw a black luxury sedan with fully tinted windows keeping time. When she slowed to a walk and then stopped, so did it. 

The back passenger-side window rolled down. “Brienne Tarth,” a cold, familiar voice floated out. 

Breathing hard, suddenly all-too-aware of the lonely road and the yawning drop at her back, Brienne planted her hands on her hips. “What do you want?”

The door opened and Tywin Lannister stepped out. He was dressed in a simple, dark business suit that probably cost more than the car. Not one he would want to get dirty, she thought, though it didn't make her less afraid. 

“I wanted to talk to you. I do know how you like your morning runs.” 

“You've been spying on us,” she blurted, and Tywin lifted one elegant eyebrow. “I don't have to talk to you.” She started walking back down the path towards the inn, wanting to run, to flee, but not giving him the satisfaction. 

“I never thought you were a coward,” Tywin said. 

Brienne stilled, keeping her back to him. “Did you just come to insult me or did you want something?”

“Our last conversation did not end well.”

She turned then, glaring at him. “That's entirely your fault.” 

“I was... heated,” Tywin said, in a tone that suggested admitting it was some great favor. “But my point stands.”

“No, it doesn't. We were ahead of you before Lannisport. We're only four points behind you now.” Brienne folded her arms across her chest, relied on her far greater size and strength to give her confidence in the face of this flinty-eyed menace. “We will beat you.” 

“You will not.”

“We already have. All your ploys have failed, Tywin.” She would never give him the respect of calling him Mr. Lannister. “Even Ramsay Bolton won't do your bidding anymore.” 

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” Tywin said blandly, but she didn't miss the way his lips thinned and went white. 

“I don't have time for your useless posturing,” she said, turning. “You can save your breath.”

“What will Jaime do when you lose?” Tywin asked sharply, and Brienne went rigid, bracing herself for the blow he was surely winding up to land. “Do you think he'll be fine knowing he failed yet again to defeat the father he hates so much?”

“You told him it would have been better if he died,” Brienne seethed, reigning in her voice so it crashed quieter than the waves. It was either that or yell, and if she started yelling at Tywin she wasn't sure she'd be able to stop. 

“Then imagine how he'll feel about you when you let him down.” 

Though Brienne had been braced, it was still a punch to the gut, displacing all her breath in a sharp, pained exhale. Tywin didn't need muscle men to do his dirty work; he could take people out just as well with his words. 

“He loves me,” she said and hated how weak her voice was. 

“I'm sure he does now. Do you think he'll love you just as much later?” 

She did, she _did_. How could she doubt the tenderness in his eyes, the gentleness of his touch? But it was the same question she had asked herself since the first race, the one that, no matter how hard she stepped on it, she couldn't keep down. The secret terror that she never wanted to face: that if she couldn't give this to Jaime, he'd never see _her_ again, only the chain of her failure around her neck. She felt like she was hanging off the edge of the cliff at their sides, scrabbling for purchase. 

“You've taken on too big a task, even for those broad shoulders. But you're in it now, aren't you? You and your ragtag little team of castoffs trying to bring me down.” Tywin's voice was a rasp, slithering and venomous as a snake. “I would wish you luck, but I don't waste time on impossibilities. I wonder that you do.” 

She couldn't even look at him as he got back into his waiting car, at the door closing behind him. All she could stare at were her sneakers, dusty and too big. One of the laces had come undone and when she knelt down to re-tie it, her hands were shaking too hard to make her thick fingers work on the delicate loops. Tywin's car pulled back onto the empty road and left her alone there by the cliffs, the seagulls screeching angrily overhead.

* * *

Brienne arrived exhausted back at the inn, but at least she was in control of herself again. She'd run back as hard and fast as she could, trying to overwhelm the noise in her head with the sound of her own drumming footsteps and ragged breathing. She didn't want to give her mind a single second of quiet reflection on Tywin's words. By the time she returned, her heart was pounding in her aching chest and her whole body was flushed and covered in sweat. She stood at the edge of the cliff for another few minutes, staring out into the sea and gulping down the fresh salt air before she returned to their room. 

Jaime was awake and showered and dressed when she entered. “Good morning, Wrench,” he said cheerfully, giving her a smacking kiss. “Looks like you had a good run.” 

“Yeah,” she said, tossing her key on the table and heading for the bathroom. “I'm going to take a shower.” 

“Do you want me to grab you some breakfast? I want to get down there before all the everything bagels are gone.” 

“That would be great,” she said, struggling to raise her voice above the noise of the water. He must have heard her, though, because she heard the door close behind him. Brienne got into the shower – too short, as most hotel showers were – and pressed her forehead into the cool, smooth wall. 

She couldn't tell Jaime what had happened. Not yet. She would, but not until they were safely back on Tarth and he couldn't walk down to the Lannister Corp garage and do something they would all regret. Brienne considered telling him just the basics – that she'd seen his father and they'd exchanged a few unpleasant words, nothing big – but she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep the tremble out of her voice long enough to say it. Safer just to avoid it entirely. 

Better to ignore the question Tywin had dragged from the dark recesses of her fears into the light, than to face it head-on now. 

When Jaime returned, successful in his hunt for breakfast, Brienne had finished her shower and was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. She felt almost normal when she smiled at him and ate her food. 

She managed to maintain her equilibrium through the bus ride to the track, though she struggled to engage in the excited banter flying around her. The crew was always turned up a notch on race days, and usually their enthusiasm fed her, too, but today she mostly kept her mouth closed, chiming in when addressed and staring out of her window at the ocean when not. 

In her driver's room, Brienne was pulling on her racing suit when there was a knock at the door. 

“Come in,” she said, keeping her tone light. 

Bronn entered, tilting his head curiously. “Everything good?” 

“Fine,” she said, not quite looking at him in the reflection of the mirror. “Car okay?”

“It is. Arya's directing Pod and the team on a few last tweaks and I was just getting in the way. You sure you're fine?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Of course. Just regular race day nerves.” 

He made a low, considering hum in his throat. “If you say so, Chief.” Brienne smiled a little. He still called her that, though he was the Chief Mechanic, now. It filled her with a pleasant warmth every time. “If you do need to talk to someone, you know where to find me.” 

“Bronn,” she said as he reached for the door handle. He glanced back, curious, and the words bubbled out of her, desperate to be free. “I talked to Tywin today.” 

“Well. Shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

Bronn turned to face her, crossing his arms over his chest. “From your face, I take it it went as well as to be expected.” 

“He said some... things. Mean, untrue.” _Maybe, maybe not_, the darkness hissed. “I haven't told Jaime.” 

“That's a mistake.” 

“Is it? What do you think he'll do if I tell him?”

“Isn't this what got the two of you in trouble last time?” 

Brienne flushed, ashamed. “How'd you hear about that?”

“He told me when he was asking me to come work for Evenstar. We had some drinks, some things came out. You have to tell him, Chief, no matter what Tywin said.” 

“I will,” she promised, “but not now. Not today. When we're back home, after the break starts, I'll tell him. It's not that big of a deal even, it's not like... they were just words.” 

Bronn's face was an entire essay on why he didn't believe her. “I worked for Lannister Corp enough years to know what that cunt's words are like. Don't let him get in your head, Chief. He's a dangerous passenger to carry when you're driving.” 

“I know.” 

“I don't think you do.” He shook his head. “I won't tell Lannister, either, but you better do it as soon as you can. He's not going to appreciate you keeping this from him no matter what, but the longer you wait, the worse it'll be.” 

Brienne nodded mutely. 

“Any other secrets you need to get off your chest?” 

She huffed, a small laugh, but a much-needed one. “No. Thank you.” 

“It's not my pleasure, but I'll bear it. Parade's in twenty.” He opened the door and hesitated, looking back one last time. “Tell him soon,” he said sternly, before shutting the door behind him. 

Brienne kept the heavy dark of it inside herself through parade, though it had retreated a little after her talk with Bronn. At weigh-in she avoided looking at Lancel entirely, instead talking with Drogo and both Direwolf and Stag Motors teams. 

“I'm looking forward to our snowmobile race during the break,” Robb said, all cheer. It had been petty, but Brienne had picked snowmobile racing on Pia's suggestion, wanting to beat him up in the north on his own turf. Though they were going well beyond Winterfell for it, since even all of Winterfell's snow melted in the summer. 

“Me too,” Brienne said. 

“What snowmobile race?” Loras asked, looking between them. 

“These two keep challenging each other,” Drogo explained. “And not inviting me, because they know I'll beat them.”

Robb laughed brightly. He was at pole position today and well ahead in the world championship here at the break and seemed to have no cares in the world. Somehow even his arrogance seemed oddly charming, probably due to the fact that it was well-earned and always delivered with a knowing wink. He was a great driver, and he knew it, and he worked hard to keep it that way, never resting on his past success. It was hard not to admire him. 

“Will you be joining us?” she asked Jon. 

“He's got other plans, a totally full summer break, he assures me,” Robb said. He slung his arm around Jon's shoulders, and Jon just sunk further into himself. Jon Snow's aversion to absurd media opps was legendary. 

“I'm ready for break this year,” Loras admitted, tugging on his shining curls. “It's been a long season already. I'm going home to Highgarden for a few weeks.” 

Brienne glanced at Renly, who was, as always it seemed these days, staring right at Loras. She wasn't sure what was going on with the two of them, but the tension was so thick between them it was a wonder everyone couldn't see it. 

“I'm staying over here this year. I've got a place rented in Lannisport,” Drogo said. “Rhaego's going back to Vaes Dothrak, though.” 

“Well if you want to come all the way up to Thenn, we can get a snowmobile just for you.” 

Drogo smiled wide at Robb, showing all his teeth, bright against his copper skin. “I might take you up on that.” 

They all finished getting weighed-in and retreated to their respective garages, and Brienne felt calm as she started back for Evenstar, until Tywin Lannister stepped to the edge of the Lannister Corp garage and watched her walk by. He was dressed much more casually here, but his eyes were lasers, latching on and tracking her movement down the entire length of the pit lane. 

As surely as though he'd yanked her back there, Brienne was at the dirt path again, his words crashing like restless waves in her mind. She couldn't seem to get herself back from the cliff's edge, and though she started at P-4, she ended the race at P-6. Lancel had gotten a podium again by claiming third position, pulling Lannister Corp further ahead once more. 

“Sorry to everyone for that drive,” she told Jaime over the radio as she headed for the parc fermé. The wheel felt awkward in her hands, like this was her first time all over again.

“You still got points, Wrench. No apologies needed.” 

But Brienne couldn't shake the feeling that Tywin had sunk her feet into concrete, and she wasn't sure she was strong enough to escape on her own.

* * *

The team returned to Tarth the next day, and on Tuesday they all gathered in the parking lot between the bungalows for the last all-hands meeting before the break. Jaime climbed up on top of the small stage they'd thrown together, and tapped the wireless mic. They hadn't had everyone together at once like this since the first day, and it was invigorating seeing all of their faces, eager and bright-eyed even after all the work they'd already done. Every person there was dedicated to helping Brienne do her best, the unbreakable thread that connected them all. A singular purpose that made coming in to work every day a pleasure. 

Brienne herself was currently tucked away behind the stage looking as downcast as she had been since Sunday. Last night, after they'd made the long journey home to Tarth – and how uncomplicated and comfortable it was to think of Tarth as _home_ now – Jaime had thought it was just the travel that made her look so drawn. But she'd woken up the same this morning, had been quiet on the drive in, even as Jaime had tried to engage her in discussions about closing everything down for a few weeks. 

Truthfully he was looking forward to spending summer break with her here, to get to just be with her without racing or his father or any of the other worries that always dogged their footsteps. They had a week and a half of media ops arranged by Pia, and then two weeks of nothing but each other. It sounded like paradise, except for the small, unwelcome worry that perhaps Brienne did not entirely feel the same. 

“Welcome to the first day of summer break,” Jaime said, shoving his anxious heart aside for now. The team cheered and hollered. “I know everybody is eager to clean out their stuff and catch their flights and ferries, so I'll keep this brief. When we started Evenstar Racing, the road to success wasn't just unpaved, it was overgrown. You've all worked your asses off this season to get us to here: _fifth place_ in the Constructor championship!” The resulting cheer was even louder than the first. “Somehow with our lesser experience and money and numbers, you're still making miracles. When we get back from break, we'll have seven races to show just how incredible this team and driver are. I want you to enjoy your time off, step away from racing, don't even open your laptops, and then I expect to see you all right here at the end of August, ready to go all the way to the podium.” 

That roar shook Jaime's temporary stage. He grinned down at Brienne and she smiled wanly back up at him. He covered the mic briefly. “Do you want to say anything?” 

She bit her lip, and though he knew it was not what she wanted to do, she nodded and climbed up with him. The crew's meaningless noise solidified into her name chanted over and over, _Bri-enne, Bri-enne, Bri-enne_. Jaime handed her the mic and kissed her swiftly on her apple-red cheek.

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly into the microphone, and the team settled. “That's very sweet of you. I am so grateful for all the work you've all put in already. I couldn't have gotten to where I am without each and every one of you, and I won't let you down the rest of the season. Thank you again.” She handed the microphone back to Jaime and retreated to her corner and he tried not to frown after her.

“Okay everyone. Go clear everything you need out of your spaces. We'll be doing a final walk-through and complete lock-up this afternoon. You'll have to try to find me during the summer if you want back in, and I don't want to be bothered during the summer.” He gave them his best Lannister smile, and saw a few of the younger crew's eyes widen. Bronn just rolled his. 

The crew scattered, chattering and laughing, the warm August air carrying their conversations in its gentle hands. So far, the summer was Jaime's favorite season on Tarth. The skies and seas blue like Brienne's eyes, the sun as bright and steady as Brienne's smile, the heat as all-encompassing and just right as Brienne's... well. He looked for her to share the turn his thoughts had taken, but she was already hurrying off to their offices. 

Before he could follow, Bronn was grabbing him to talk about the car over the break, and then Jaime needed to talk to Arya and the engineering team about their plan when they returned, to Shireen and Pia about the trip to the north in a few days for the snowmobile race, to Selwyn about precautionary security measures they were taking while the grounds were empty. By the time Jaime was hugging Addam goodbye outside of his and Brienne's shared office, it was late afternoon and the three of them were the only people left. 

“Don't get too sunburned in Dorne,” Jaime told him, and Addam grinned. 

“Dacey and I don't plan on being outside much.” 

Jaime laughed. “Did you say goodbye to Brienne already?”

“Yeah.” Addam's smile dropped and he looked serious, an unusual expression on his normally jovial face. “Is everything all right with her? She seems off.”

“I don't know.” Jaime looked through the small window, saw her shadow moving around; diligently packing up her things, he was sure. “I was gonna talk to her once everybody else left.” 

“That leaves just me, then.” Addam patted him on the shoulder. “Good luck, brother.”

“You, too. Tell Dacey we said hi, will you?” 

“Done. See you in a few weeks!”

They waved goodbye and Jaime watched Brienne through the window for another few seconds, saw her stop at her desk and just stare down, unmoving. She seemed so pensive; he wanted only to hold her and find out what was wrong, though she'd been reticent to talk at all. Jaime tried not to be wounded by it, but it was hard when she was keeping him at bay for reasons he couldn't understand. 

Instead he made the rounds of the buildings first, making sure everyone was gone, that all the doors were locked, lights off, garage secured. It reminded him of when he'd first arrived in January, though then it had been raining, and he'd had a ring in his pocket. One that was still tucked in his desk at work, so Brienne wouldn't accidentally find it at home. 

Jaime sighed and headed back for their office. The season was going so quickly; seven more races and then they'd either have succeeded or not, but the most important question of his life still waited for after it all was done. He was almost positive Brienne wanted what he did – especially on days when it was just the two of them sharing their domestic cocoon – but the small uncertainty that remained hurt so much it felt outsized, like even the possibility of her saying no was too painful to think about. And in Jaime's experience, 'no' was always a possibility. 

He opened the door to the office and met her worried gaze. 

“Everything good?” she asked. 

“Yeah, I did a check of every building. Just us here now.” She'd packed up her laptop and a small stack of papers, and she was running her fingers over the keyboard still on her desk. “What about you?” Jaime asked, intently watching her face. 

“I'm ready to go, too.” 

“That's not what I meant.”

“I'm fine,” she said, and her smile was a lie, pricking his heart with fear. The last time she had lied to him his whole life had nearly burned to the ground. 

“You don't seem fine,” he muttered, and she just shrugged it off. 

Jaime huffed and started packing up his own things: laptop, a book on leadership that he was halfway through, his own stack of papers. Brienne watched him; he could feel the caress of her eyes all over his body, slowly driving him mad. Whatever she was hiding, he didn't understand why she felt she couldn't tell him, unless it was something terrible. By the time he'd shoved the last of his items into his bag, his shoulders hurt from the tension. 

“Tell me what's going on,” Jaime pleaded, staring down at his desk. “Whatever it is, it can't be worse than you lying to me again.” 

Brienne inhaled sharply and when he looked up he saw his words had hit their mark; the guilt on her face was wide and deep and Jaime felt suddenly swathed in clinging fear. _I take it back_, he thought, _whatever this is, I don't want to know._

“I talked to your father at Pyke.” 

Jaime's mouth dropped open. He'd expected many things, but not that. “When?”

“Sunday morning before the race. When I went for my run, he stopped me by the side of the road.”

That only caused a whole new cascade of questions. Jaime's jaw worked as he tried to pick just one to start with. “Why didn't you tell me Sunday?”

“I thought it would be better to wait until we were home again.”

“You think a lot of things about what I should and shouldn't know about my father.” 

Brienne winced, but his heart was pounding so hard in his chest he thought it would break through and fall at her feet. 

“I did what I thought was best,” she said quietly. “He'd searched me out and I didn't want you to overreact--”

“Overreact?” Jaime felt a snarl in his throat, struggled to fight it down. “That my father apparently stalked you so he could talk to you alone? How on earth could I overreact to that?” His father again. Of course it was him, inserting himself between them, driving in a wedge that would rip away the one thing more important to him than his racing career had been. 

“Jaime.”

“What did he say? What was so important he had to do this? What could he possibly have said that you thought I'd go over there and, what? Attack him?” 

All he was doing was breathing, his chest heaving with it, but he couldn't get enough air. She still feared his father more than she believed in him. His missing hand hurt at his side, straining to clench into a fist that would never come. 

“He said--” she shook her head and looked down at her own hands, twisting into each other. “It doesn't matter.”

“Obviously it does, Brienne, or you would have told me. What did he say?”

She looked like she might vomit instead of speak. But then some resigned certainty settled over her and she lifted herself to her full height, tall and strong and obviously terrified, but she stared straight at him. “He reminded me that there's a very good chance that we can't do this. That _I_ can't do this. And when I let you down, that's all that you'll think of when you see me. That I,” she swallowed hard, her eyes bright with tears, “I'll have failed you. And I know you wouldn't mean to, but it would change your opinion of me.” 

Jaime's mouth dropped open and he could do no more than blink for five seconds, ten, while Brienne shifted nervously under his dumbfounded gaze. “You think I'll... love you less because you didn't do the impossible?” 

“It's not impossible,” she whispered and Jaime laughed, stark and half-crazy. His fears had been wrong, but only because he should have been afraid of something much worse: that Brienne still didn't truly understand how he felt about her. 

“_Now_ you believe in yourself.”

“I'm sorry, I should have told you all this on Sunday.”

“You should have.” The fact that she hadn't dug deep. He couldn't get his heart around how she didn't know. “Did you love me less when I lost my hand?” he asked quietly. He felt a small, unwelcome shiver that she might, improbably, say yes. 

But Brienne's face widened in horror. “Of course not.” 

“I wasn't the same man you'd fallen for. I couldn't drive, I was depressed. You didn't get to be part of a championship team. Do you look at me now and see all that?”

“No,” she whispered. 

“What do you see?” he pressed her. 

“Just you,” she said, and her voice was shaky. “The man I love.” 

Jaime glanced down at the upper drawer of his desk and thought of all of his plans. _Ask her soon_, Aunt Genna had whispered. _I'd bet on you two_, Addam had said. So much of Brienne's constant nervous unease came into focus, as well as his own occasional middle-of-the-night demons that taunted him with reminders that his life had been a series of losses, promising this would be no different. “Do you really think I care about any of this more than I care about you?” 

There it was: a flicker of doubt, a hint of confusion. “I know how important it is to you to bring your father down.” 

“It is,” he agreed. “I would love almost nothing more than to see him brought low. _Almost_ nothing,” he emphasized, willing her to see that he wasn't holding anything else back from her now. 

“What do you mean?” she breathed; she looked desperate to understand. 

“I love you,” he said. Not new words, and more true now than they'd been the first time. But they were words she'd heard many times before. Brienne had been the one to tell him that words were wind; he had something tangible, a promise he could make now if he believed her feelings for him were truer than any patterns in his past. If he believed in her as much as he wanted her to believe in him.

Good thing believing in Brienne was the easiest thing he'd ever done. Before he loved her – in that brief period of time before he'd even _liked_ her – he'd believed in her. 

With a sure hand, Jaime brought out the small velvet box and set it down on the desk. Brienne looked at it like it was dangerous as a live grenade, mysterious as an alien life form.

“What is that?”

“It's a ring,” he said, watching her. 

“What do you have it for?”

“I'm proposing,” he said patiently. 

“To me?”

“Yes. I'm proposing to you, Brienne. You have to understand – for me, it's about you. It's always been about you. It's only ever been about you.”

He picked the box up, tucked it in his right elbow and opened it with his left hand, then held it out to her. Brienne's whole body was still, a statue of flesh and bone and blood captured in a moment of utter shock. Jaime hurried on, unnerved by what she wasn't saying. 

“Do you know when I got this?” he asked her, trying to modulate the growing anxiety in his voice. Her eyes flickered up to his. “January.”

That seemed to snap her out of whatever paralysis she was in. “_January?_ But we weren't even really together then.”

“I didn't care. We spent those weeks apart and all I could think was that I didn't want to live the rest of my life like that.” 

“Jaime,” she said, a kind of choked-back sob, and he took a steadying breath for both of them. 

“I didn't want it to be like this,” he sighed. “I was going to wait until after the season was done so you didn't have to worry about telling me no. I was going to make it romantic, like you deserve. I had a speech.” 

“I don't need a speech.” Brienne's eyes were shining with unshed tears, and a deep, waking joy that made his heart swell. Shit. They were doing this. He could do at least one part of it right. 

He came around from behind his desk, and she from hers, quietly, as though they were drawn by a shrinking rope pulling them together. Jaime smoothed down his t-shirt and got down on one knee on the hard floor. Brienne inhaled sharply, pressing her fist to her lips.

“Fine, no speech,” he conceded, and his voice and hand trembled trying to contain all of his love. “But I need you to know this: you helped me build a life so full that I could live without you, but _gods_, Brienne, I don't want to. Every second I spend with you only reminds me how much I don't want to be apart ever again. I don't care if we don't beat my father. I don't care if we walk out of here and never come back. None of that will change how I see you, or how I feel about you. All I care about is that wherever we go, whatever we're doing, we're together.” He briefly closed his eyes; the air was so still he wasn't sure he could breathe right. He looked up at her again, not just his sun, but his whole universe. “Please, Brienne. Let me adore you for the rest of our lives.” 

Tears rushed down her cheeks, and her fist flattened out to cover her face with her palm. “You're making me cry,” she accused him from behind her hand. 

Jaime stood with a stifled groan and a slight ache in his knee and a quiet, burning hope in his heart. He pulled her willingly into his arms, filling them with the familiar angles and planes of her beloved body. It astonished him that she didn't know how every one of his heartbeats was already hers; it shamed him that he'd let so many months pass that he hadn't shown her. Brienne pressed her head into his neck, her tears dripping hot against his skin. Jaime closed his eyes and buried his nose in her hair and breathed her in. She still hadn't technically said yes. He felt unfinished, like an engine missing its last, most critical piece. “Is it at least happy crying, Wrench?” he asked her quietly. 

Her body shook with both laughter and tears, and she nodded her head against his shoulder. “Yes,” she said, lifting her head, and everything clicked into place inside him, the relieved pounding of his heart in his own ears as loud as an engine's roar. Her face was a mess: tear-streaked cheeks already patchy with her flush, her eyes red and wet, her hair matted to her temples. Jaime hoped he never forgot how she looked in this moment, her radiant, daylight happiness driving away the last of the long night in his life. She cupped his head in her warm, strong hands and he knew her answer without her having to speak. “Yes,” she said anyway, the sweetest sound he had ever heard. “I want to marry you, Jaime. I want it so much. Yes. _Yes_.” The words were ringing bells, tolling loud; a shimmering, endless echo through every part of him, announcing the end of loneliness and the beginning of everything. 

He felt like shouting in elation. He felt like kissing her until neither of them could breathe. He felt like laughing and crying, too. 

So he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today (May 4) is one year since I posted my very first Jaime/Brienne fic. Though I'd hoped to have something new to post, I think this chapter is actually the perfect alternative. Thank you all for your support. 💖 There will be another chapter later this week! Though probably Friday instead of Thursday.


	42. August (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can we go tell everyone?” she asked. Brienne's face was young and happy and glowing and Jaime would have given her whatever she wanted – cars, the moon, the beating heart from his chest – if she'd asked it from him then. 
> 
> “Where do you want to start?” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always intended to post the two August chapters closer together because this one is short and relies so directly on the previous chapter's happenings. :)

Later, when the tears had dried and the laughter had settled, bubbling in their hearts, they were still standing in the office embracing each other when Brienne said: “That wasn't your prepared speech?” 

Jaime chuckled and kissed the side of her hair. His fiancee. His _wife_ someday when he could whisk her to the nearest sept. “My prepared speech had a lot of flowery metaphors. If you're very nice to me, I might give it to you on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.” 

Brienne pulled back and smiled at him as wide and lovely as a sunrise across the ocean. “Deal,” she said. She had put the ring on and she stared at it now, tracing it with her finger. It was a plain metallic band inlaid with eight multicolored stones, and it fit perfectly. Jaime sighed in relief. 

“I had it made,” he explained as Brienne stared down at it. “The band is chrome; it's resilient and strong and beautiful, like you. The stones come from the beach down the road where we met for our first date.” 

Her gaze shifted to him, warmly amused. “That was a date?”

“I kissed you at the end of it, didn’t I?”

She laughed a little and kissed him now, a tender press of her lips to his. 

“There are eight of them,” Jaime continued once she pulled away, “the number I drove under, as a reminder that you were there for me on the best and worst days of my life. The ring is a promise that I'll be there for you on yours.” 

“I love it. I love you.” 

“I hope so, because you're stuck with me now.” 

“Can we go tell everyone?” she asked. Brienne's face was young and happy and glowing and Jaime would have given her whatever she wanted – cars, the moon, the beating heart from his chest – if she'd asked it from him then. 

“Where do you want to start?” he said. 

They started, accidentally, with Podrick, who they ran into as they came out of the office with their arms around each other. He smiled when he saw them and then stopped and narrowed his eyes, and even before Brienne had lifted her hand to show him the ring, he lit up. “C-c-c-congratulations!” he managed and threw himself with such force between the two of them that they staggered backward. 

After they'd hugged and Podrick himself had gotten misty-eyed at the ring, Jaime patted him on the shoulder. “What are you even doing here?” he asked the younger man. “I thought everyone had left.”

“I-I was coming t-to get my w-w-work boots. Wenda wants t-to go hiking.” Jaime grinned at the younger man; Pod had met Wenda at the grocery store and since they'd been dating he would spend whole afternoons talking about how amazing she was and how good she was at archery, of all things. She had the same outdoors-loving soul of all the islanders Jaime had met. 

“Podrick,” Brienne said, frowning, “you can't go hiking in those work boots, you'll get huge blisters. You need hiking shoes.”

“But I d-d-don't have any. I don't know wh-what to get.” 

Brienne looked over at Jaime and he laughed, shaking his head. “All right, let's go.” 

Which was how the second person who found out was Argella, who'd been forced into a summertime job by her parents and had ended up at the shoe store. “What? I like shoes,” she said when Jaime and Brienne looked askance at seeing her there. 

“I should get some new sneakers while I'm here,” Brienne said, heading to the men's section. Argella went with her, and was taking a discarded box back when she spotted the ring on Brienne's hand. 

“What is _that_?” she gasped, pointing at Brienne's hand like there was a snake wrapped around her finger. 

Brienne blushed. “Jaime and I are engaged,” she said and even as Jaime's chest started to puff up, Argella shot him the most suspicious and critical stare he had ever received in his life. Even his own sister could not have put as much threat into that single look as this teenage girl did. 

“I'm watching you, pal,” she said ferociously. “I can hack your email if I need to.” 

“But I changed my password,” he said weakly and she just glared more intensely at him and pointed two fingers at her own eyes and then at him and he nodded. “Understood.”

Then Argella beamed and hugged Brienne and shoved her hand out to Jaime to shake. “Congratulations,” Argella said, and Jaime shook her hand gingerly while Brienne stifled her laughter. 

They parted from Podrick in front of the store with another round of hugs, and headed home to tell Brienne's father. They found him and Elenda sitting out on the back deck, drinking lemonade and chatting. The air was warm and soft, the early evening light starting to turn gold. 

“Short stuff! Jaime!” Selwyn greeted them and Elenda smiled in welcome. “Come sit with us for a bit.” 

They did, taking chairs next to each other while Selwyn disappeared inside to get more cups, and Brienne gripped Jaime's hand with enough force he realized she was nervous. 

“I need to tell you something,” Brienne blurted out as soon as her father stepped back onto the deck, and Selwyn stopped, a worried look on his face. 

“All right,” he said, taking a seat. “What is it, darling?”

“Jaime and I are engaged,” she said, and Selwyn exhaled loudly, his big shoulders relaxing. 

“Oh thank the gods,” he said. “I thought you were going to tell me you'd crashed the car or something.” 

She laughed, ending in a squeak when Selwyn stood up and grabbed her in a hug, pulling her out of the chair towards him. Jaime was impressed by the strength of it, knew that strength was driven by the immense love the man had for his daughter. 

Selwyn kissed her forehead and pulled back a little, smoothing back her hair with his big hands. “Congratulations, darling. I'm so happy for you.” He turned to Jaime then, and Jaime stood, too, holding out his hand to shake it. Selwyn frowned and wrapped Jaime in a huge bear hug, patting him warmly on the back. “No more handshakes, son. Welcome to the family.” 

Jaime swallowed hard and hugged his future father-in-law. “Thanks,” Jaime managed to say, his voice far too rough. He cleared his throat. “It's a wonderful family to be a part of.” 

“Well, you make it better,” Selwyn said gruffly, and Brienne pressed her hand to her mouth and sniffed loudly and Jaime knuckled his eyes and Elenda just laughed gently with a few tears on her face, too. 

“Gods, enough of this,” Brienne pleaded, wiping at her own eyes. “We should go out to celebrate.” 

“You two go on tonight,” Selwyn said. “We'll take you out later.” He kissed his daughter's cheek, and Brienne hugged him hard, and Jaime saw the way Selwyn closed his eyes as he held her, not sad, but accepting that something important had changed. Not that it hadn't already been changing, but this seemed to drive it home for her father. 

Brienne took Jaime's hand and they headed back to their little house. When the door had closed, she toed off her shoes and started texting, and Jaime just stood in the entryway, watching her. 

“Who are you telling?” he asked, and Brienne blushed faintly, before smiling up at him. 

“We have a group text of the Formula One women, I figured I'd just send a message to them and that would do the trick. Especially since Pia is in that group.”

“I'll expect an appointment for photos sometime in the next couple of days.” He pulled out his own phone and stared at his contact list: coworkers, friends, even a few family. Before Brienne, he couldn't have imagined having them to share news with, let alone having this sort of news to share. For many years he just assumed the few people who cared would simply someday hear after-the-fact that he'd died in a tragic accident and then move on with their lives. 

Jaime wasn't even sure who to start with. Since Addam was likely on his plane already and Bronn barely even looked at his texts, Jaime sent a quick message to Genna. 

'Took your advice. She said yes.' 

Genna's response was swift: 'Good for you. Take care of each other.'

'We will.' 

Jaime was watching Brienne as she scrolled through her phone when his own rang. “Bronn's calling me,” he told Brienne, startled. “Hello?”

“You fucking did it,” Bronn said, and Jaime grinned over at Brienne. 

“I take it Lollys told you.”

“She did and you did not, which I will remember come the wedding.” 

“If you'd ever read your texts I could have sent one to you.” 

“I called you, didn't I? You couldn't have done me the courtesy?”

Jaime could feel the strange edge to Bronn's tone and realized he really did feel put out that Jaime hadn't called him. He recalled Bronn sitting at his bedside back at the hospital in Harrenhal and smiled softly down at his feet. “I'm sorry,” Jaime said. “I should have called you. Do you want to hang up and we can pretend?”

“No,” Bronn said, but the gravel in his tone felt normal again. “So how'd you manage to convince her?”

“Lots of sex,” Jaime said, and he was rewarded with Bronn's excessively aggrieved groan in one ear and Brienne's horrified laugh in the other. 

“Get fucked, Lannister.”

“Well--”

“That's not what I meant, you ass!” 

Jaime felt like an effervescent spring of joy had sprouted inside him, running endless and free. 

“Warrior's balls, you're going to be even more obnoxious now, aren't you?”

“Probably,” Jaime admitted. 

“Remember when you didn't even want to hire her as your race engineer?” Jaime glanced over at Brienne, who was typing madly and smiling from ear-to-ear, looking as giddy as he'd ever seen her. 

“I was an idiot,” he said softly. 

“I look like a fuckin' genius now. I plan to put that in my speech at the wedding.” 

“As long as you don't curse too much, say whatever you want.” 

“Jaime,” Bronn said, abruptly serious, and it made Jaime's breath catch in surprise. “Congratulations,” the other man continued. “I know your life has not been as easy as it could have been. I'm happy for you.”

It was as close to a declaration of love as Bronn was ever going to get, and Jaime tucked it away with the steadily growing pile of good things in his life. “Thank you,” he said to Bronn, knowing his friend wouldn't want anything more.

“You've wasted enough time with me now,” Bronn said. “Go spend some time with your future wife.”

“I've got a few more people to tell and then I plan to. Should I call you in the morning so I can report back on the evening's activities?”

“Fuck off, Lannister,” Bronn groaned and he hung up. 

Jaime took his own shoes off, settled on the couch next to Brienne, and texted Addam – 'I asked and the sun said yes' – and then Peck and Willem and Melara, too. Brienne had set her phone down on the coffee table and though it flashed with the occasional new message, she had her head back, her eyes closed, and a small smile on her face. 

“Told everybody you wanted?”

“Yes,” she said on a soft exhale. “They're planning a bachelorette party.” 

Jaime eyed the phone with more interest, and Brienne put her bare foot over top of it. He chuckled. “Just don't let Arya run it or you might all come away bloody.” 

“Sansa is in charge and honestly that might be worse.” 

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her gently against him, her body settling warm into his chest. Jaime kissed her temple, her cheek, the side of her mouth. “How hungry are you?” he asked her softly. 

Brienne turned her head to look right at him, her eyes already darkening to midnight blue. “Ravenous,” she said, before claiming his mouth with her own. She turned in his arms and pressed him back into the couch, laying her long, strong body on top of his. In every way, she matched and bettered him – her height, her strength, her true heart and her stubborn kindness. They hadn't irreparably fucked things up, though there had been so many opportunities for it, but they'd picked their way down the path together and now they were here. 

She turned her eager lips to his neck, tugged up his shirt and pressed her hot, calloused palms against his skin. 

“We're gonna have so much married sex,” he whispered in her ear, and he felt her laugh in his chest.

“Let's start with engaged sex first,” she said, biting her lip almost shyly, and he craned up enough to nip at her thick lips himself, to tease his tongue between them and lose himself just in the heat of her mouth. 

Brienne rolled her pelvis down into his and Jaime moaned. His hand explored the rippling plane of her back, cupped her ass through her suddenly very annoying jeans. Skin was what he wanted, but all he had was fabric, and he tugged uselessly at her pants as she continued to undulate against him. 

“Get these off, Wrench.” 

“We have time,” she said low against his throat. 

Jaime felt the words sink into his blood, his heart pump them through his body. They had tonight and tomorrow and after the season and the years beyond. Even if they screwed up sometimes, they were making the commitment to fight for it. And he had seen Brienne fight: they would be okay. He wrapped his arms around her and grasped her so hard she stopped moving. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Yeah.” He loosened his grip a little and she shifted her lower half in a way that sent sparks shooting up his spine. “Oh, gods, do that again.” She did, and then again, and again, until he was whimpering with every slow press of her body against his. 

Brienne was all focused intensity on top of him and he was definitely going to come in his pants like a teenager if she kept this up, so he put his hand on her hip to still her. “Can we at least take our clothes off?” he gasped. 

She nodded and sat back so she was straddling his thighs, her hands going to his shirt, tugging it up and off of him. Gently she ran her palms over his nipples and Jaime inhaled deeply. It was just this side of ticklish, and when she did it again, it stirred him lower. Whatever she saw on his face, she must have liked, because she stayed there for awhile, bending down occasionally to lick and suck, her fingers driving him with the same steady confidence he'd seen her use on her car. This alone was going to push him over the edge and he couldn't bring himself to care; it was better by far to sink into the deep dark of her eyes. 

While he anchored himself with his hand on her hip, Brienne's hands drifted down his stomach, slid just under the band of his pants, and made quick work of his button and zipper. The release of pressure made him shudder and she smiled wickedly down at him, pressing the heel of her palm against his rigid length until he groaned and tightened his fingers around her. 

“This will be half mine once we're married,” she teased – and Jaime honestly couldn't tell if it was the rough slide of her hand or her words that pulled the soft cry from his chest.

“It's all yours now,” he panted, and Brienne looked so pleased by the response he unclenched his fingers and twisted them in her shirt, dragging her down for a hard kiss. “Why don't you take it?” 

With surprising dexterity given her size, Brienne pulled his pants and underwear down enough to set him free, then lifted her legs up and had her own clothes off and over the other side of the coffee table, before she slid wet and ready along his cock. 

Jaime tilted his hips up, searching for entrance, and she tightened her pale, muscled thighs a little, settling him. “Let me,” she said firmly, and he was happy to let her grab him with her steady hand, squeeze and slide her fingers up and down and then over the head until he hissed through clenched teeth. He could feel the cool steel of her ring bumping against his sensitive skin. 

Jaime was willingly trapped under her broad chest, between her powerful thighs, in the hypnotic nighttime of her eyes. He could have fought it – he tucked the idea away for another night when tussling in bed would make a good tension release – but tonight he'd truly given her his heart, and it felt right to give her his body, too, to watch as she settled his cock at her center, to hold still while she slowly lowered herself onto him so slick and hot Jaime had to bite his lip to just let it happen. 

“I love you,” he breathed, and Brienne clenched all around him, her head falling back to expose the long column of her throat as she rode him with growing urgency. He stroked his hand up her neck to touch her pulse, wild and alive in the shadow of her jaw. “I love you,” he said again, louder, deeper. “Fuck, Brienne.” Her hands were fused to his shoulders, her inner thighs sweaty against his hips. Jaime snuck his finger back down to rest against her clit, so she could ride his finger and his cock both, and she trembled at his touch. 

Her head fell forward and she increased her pace as her eyes locked with his. “Ask me again,” she commanded him, and though his brain shorted out, somehow he scrambled together enough words to make sense. 

“Please,” he managed, his voice just on the edge of losing control, “marry me. Be mine. Let me be yours. _Please_,” he begged, though she'd already answered him once. He curled his hand into her bushy hairs, thrust his pelvis up to meet her in perfect time. 

“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, gods, yes.” Her words dissolved into a high-pitched keening wail and he pounded desperately into her when she went tense above, when she gripped all of him and pulled him with her and all he heard was Brienne promising yes until the end of his days.

* * *

They slept for awhile on the couch, until it was dark and a series of message alerts stirred Brienne from where she was nestled on top of Jaime's body. He moved slowly under her and she saw the bright light of his phone, felt the amused rumble of his laugh against her cheek. 

“What is it?” she mumbled. 

“Just Addam being insufferable.” She heard the thud of his phone on the ground. “I'm a fan of engaged sex,” he said. 

“Me too.” Brienne lifted her hand enough to look at the ring, felt the same burning joy and unreality of it as she had since Jaime had pulled the little box out of his desk. “I can't believe you got this in January.” 

“December, truthfully. I ordered it right after Crone's Day.” 

“Pretty confident.”

“Not at all,” he said, his arms going tighter around her. “But the alternative was unthinkable.” 

She could hear his heart against her ear, feel his chin against the top of her head. Her feet were well below his, but she didn't feel too big when he wrapped her in his arms like this. She rubbed the bottom of the ring against his ribs. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Tywin sooner.” 

“We're in this together. I need to know you trust me. You need to know that you can rely on me.” 

“I do.” Brienne lifted her head, settled her chin on his breastbone to look up at him. “Of course I do.” 

His lips curled up only a little at the ends. “Maybe you will now.” He pulled her hand up and kissed where the ring met the knuckle. “Please don't hide anything else from me.”

“I won't, I promise,” she swore, and Jaime searched her face before nodding, looking relieved. 

“Do you think it's safe for you to keep doing your pre-race runs?”

“I don't want to stop them, but I shouldn't go alone.” He looked reluctant and she grinned. “It doesn't have to be you, though, I know that's earlier than you like. Sandor's a definite no. I'll see if Arya and the other women are interested.” 

“Garlan would go with you.” 

She thought of the handsome Tyrell and kissed Jaime's chest, right above his heart. “Maybe I'll ask him.”

“He's going to be very disappointed when he hears we're engaged.” 

Brienne snickered, licked a circle around one of Jaime's nipples and was rewarded with a surprised gasp. “You can't possibly be jealous.” 

“Not at all. But the boy loves you. They all love you. Not as much as I do, of course, but with their own, fierce loyalty. None of us will think any less of you if we can't do this.” 

It was simple now to believe that Jaime truly wouldn't care – she trusted he would not have promised himself to her if he hadn't meant it – but the crew had been hired just for this. “I don't want to let them down.”

“Impossible that you would, unless you drove your car purposefully into the wall.” 

Brienne kissed her way across his chest, felt him hardening enticingly against her thigh. “No walls, check.” 

“And – ah,” he gasped when she gently used her teeth on his shoulder, “no spinning into your competitors, either.” 

“Not even Renly?”

“Especially not Renly. You don't want to make his boyfriend mad. Loras is vicious when he's angry.” 

His hand was rubbing circles all down her back and over the line of her hip, and even though she was actually hungry now, she wanted this first. “We shouldn't miss dinner on our first night engaged,” she said, though, in case he really did need food. 

“I'm not gonna miss it,” he murmured, and with the latent power he always had, Jaime flipped them so she was on her back on the couch and he was above her. “I just believe a good meal has appetizers as well as dessert.” He settled in-between her legs and eventually they ended up having their celebratory meal at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because sometimes I don't want to wait for you to discover things: Jaime does in fact pick up the rock he eventually uses for the ring in the August chapter in year one. 😄


	43. September (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer break passed far too quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me start by linking you to [this AMAZING drawing by dragonzair of Brienne in her Evenstar Racing driver suit!](https://dragonzair.tumblr.com/post/617979090209751040/procrastinating-rn-but-i-needed-to-draw-this) Look at her face!! And her pose! And the logo! This is definitely her driver promo picture and I love it so much.

**Lannister Corp: 107 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 96 pts**

The summer break passed far too quickly. 

Though they had four weeks off of racing, the first two were packed with an engagement photo shoot organized by Pia, interviews with multiple media outlets, and their already planned summer break social media events. Those included the snowmobile race against Robb and Drogo up in Thenn, which Brienne won convincingly. 

“Consider it an engagement gift,” Robb said after, but his smile looked too strained to believe she'd done anything but beat him fair and square. She expected a new challenge from him before the next race in White Harbor. Drogo was both much more magnanimous in defeat and celebratory afterwards when they all went to a local Winterfell bar to celebrate the engagement. Sansa and Arya joined them, and they all emerged the next day with varying degrees of hangovers that meant she and Jaime spent their last day in Winterfell lounging around their hotel room instead of seeing the sights. 

“We can come back for our honeymoon,” he promised when Brienne made small noises of dismay. Not too loudly; she had her own headache to deal with. 

“I was hoping we could go somewhere more beach-friendly.” 

“Anxious to see me in a swimsuit, Wrench?” When she only blushed red in response, Jaime laughed in delight, although he winced a little after. “I love that a bathing suit still makes you blush even after you've nearly suffocated me with your--”

“Oh gods,” Brienne choked out, laughing, her face burning even redder. “There's a difference between doing it and talking about it.” 

“You don't have to be ashamed of asking for what you want.”

“I'm not ashamed. I'm just... not used to it, I guess.” 

Jaime rolled his head on the pillow, watching her with eyes heated like banked coals, there but not ready to ignite yet. “You'll have a lifetime to practice now.”

Brienne smiled immediately, the mere idea of their future together an easy trigger every time that took her back to the joy she'd felt when Jaime had gone down on one knee in their office. “Then I'll start now: yes, I would like to see my incredibly hot future husband in a swimsuit on a nice beach.”

“Far be it for me to deny my future wife's wishes,” he replied, grinning happily. 

“I do have some other wishes, if you want me to practice more,” she continued, teasing and hopeful and still a little embarrassed. Her head felt stuffed full of cotton, but she thought she could fight through it. 

“Give me an hour or two and we'll see what we can do,” he promised. By that evening, he'd fulfilled at least a couple of them. 

The second two weeks sped by even more quickly than the first. Not that she and Jaime got up to much; she took him camping and hiking and walking the beaches, he took her on motorcycle rides all over the island, and they spent time with her father and Elenda and the crew that had stayed on Tarth. Even Tyrion came by for a day-long visit after Jaime called him to share the news of the engagement. The brothers had been reluctant to talk to each other too frequently in case Tywin grew suspicious, but the middle of summer break had seemed a safe enough time to reach out. When Tyrion knocked on their door one Thursday morning, he was almost completely hidden behind an enormous potted plant. 

“Tyrion,” Jaime said, laughing, “what is that?”

“You know me, I hate traditional gifts.” 

Brienne took the plant and looked around their already-cramped house for a place to put it. 

“Maybe it'll fit on the patio,” she said. 

“Throw it away if you must, I only came to congratulate my brother and apologize to you,” Tyrion said blithely, wandering into their home. She and Jaime exchanged amused looks. While Brienne hefted the plant out onto the patio, she heard Jaime and Tyrion's soft murmurs in the house. Whatever they were discussing sounded private, so she lingered out there, adjusting the plant, tidying up a few stray leaves that had blown in. Eventually, the two brothers joined her. 

“Jaime, go get us something to drink, I need to talk with your fiancée,” Tyrion commanded. 

“You need to work on your manners, little brother.”

“Not with you, I don't. You told me the Crone doesn't leave presents for boys who don't clean their brother's rooms and I believed that until I was six.” 

Jaime glanced at Brienne with big eyes under hopefully lifted brows. “I was very busy with karting, I needed his help and I knew he would never agree to just do it.”

“I'm not siding with you on this,” Brienne said. “Galladon did the same thing to me, except it was doing the dishes on his nights for a year when I was seven.” 

Tyrion stood side-by-side with Brienne and they both crossed their arms over their chests, glaring in mock-anger at Jaime. He held his hand and stump up and laughed in defeat. “Fine, I'll get the drinks with no please _or_ thank you needed.” 

When he'd disappeared back inside, Tyrion climbed into one of the chairs and Brienne sat across from him. “The plant looks good there,” he said, smiling easily. 

“It does.”

“I love my brother,” he continued, his voice still light, but there was a heavy seriousness in his mismatched eyes. “He protected me in a hundred different ways growing up, until racing took him away.” 

“That doesn't surprise me at all. He fights for those he loves. Defending family seems to be a Lannister trait.”

“I suppose it is, though it's misplaced and twisted in most of us. But not Jaime. He's the best version of what a Lannister can be, although he thinks he's the least Lannister of any of us. That's because of our father, of course.” Tyrion looked down at his short-fingered hands and sighed. “You and I haven't had a lot of time to talk, just the two of us, but I love my brother, and I'm happy that he's happy.”

She waited for more – a threat, a warning, a snarky comment, but Tyrion only sat there, staring at his hands. “I won't hurt him,” she promised, and Tyrion glanced up, smiling a little. 

“It never crossed my mind that you would. This isn't about you at all, Brienne. Have you ever loved someone deeply and still been intensely jealous of them? That's what it's like to be Jaime's little dwarf brother.” His words were sharp, but the only person he was cutting was himself. “I could have been the Lannister my father wishes Jaime were, if Jaime hadn't saved me from myself. Tywin knows I'm here. He asked me to report back, give him something he could use against you later. And I thought about doing it.” Tyrion's voice was hoarse, a shadow in the sunny afternoon. 

“But you won't,” Brienne said, and it wasn't a question. 

“I won't,” Tyrion agreed. “Not because I particularly like you – you seem fine, from the little we've interacted. But because I love my brother, and I hate our father.”

She didn't know what to say to that; Tyrion had always been something of an enigma to her, even when she'd been working for Lannister Corp and not against them. She wondered what was taking Jaime so long, but suspected he was stalling to give them time to talk. Tyrion tilted his head and studied her carefully, and she could see Tywin's faint influence in it. 

“You must be wondering why I'm telling you all this. It's because, Brienne Tarth, there are many more Lannisters who do not love my brother so much. Who do not hate my father with the same passion. None of them work for you – they're all loyal to a fault, Jaime did well with that. But you cannot trust the rest of us.”

“What about Genna?”

Tyrion blinked and she realized she'd caught him completely off-guard. “Aunt Genna is more like Jaime,” he said, a smile flitting about his lips. “If you've earned her goodwill, you can trust it.” 

“We're not as undefended and unprepared as you seem to think, Tyrion.”

“Apparently you're not. You'll make a fine Lannister after all.” 

“Don't say that,” Jaime said, pushing open the door with his elbow. Brienne started to move to help him but he waved her off and expertly juggled the drinks down to the table. “I left you here to be nice, not to insult her.” 

“Only you would think becoming a Lannister was an insult.” 

Jaime gave him a bland stare and sat down next to Brienne. “Besides, what if I become a Tarth, instead?”

Tyrion rolled his eyes and took the offered beer. “I wouldn't put it past you,” he muttered. “No offense, of course, it's a perfectly fine name,” he directed at Brienne. 

“Mm,” she said noncommittally. Jaime squeezed her knee under the table and she forced herself to smile, but only for him. “I appreciate your insight, Tyrion. I'll keep it in mind.” 

They'd spent the day out on that patio with their new plant while Tyrion did his best to gently embarrass Jaime with stories of their childhood and Jaime just beamed, clearly thrilled to have his brother there. Brienne watched them fondly, wondering what Galladon would have said if he'd still been alive. _He wouldn't have liked Tyrion_, she thought at one point, smiling into her drink. But she was certain that he would have been happy for her, and instead of sadness, it brought her peace. 

The most enjoyable part of the summer, though, were the hours she and Jaime spent lounging in the sun together at her little house, often talking about the future. 

“We should move somewhere else after the season is done,” Brienne said one lazy afternoon as the return to racing hovered near. 

They were sitting in the patio chairs, drinking beers and listening to the hum of insects, the leaves of Tyrion's gift plant swaying in the slight breeze. The sunlight was a soft blanket on their skin. Jaime lifted up his sunglasses to stare at her in shock. “Off of Tarth?”

“No,” she said quickly, saw the relief in his eyes, and loved him a little more. “I mean we should buy a place together here, on our own. Don't you think?” 

Jaime pulled his sunglasses back down and took her hand. “I'd like that.” 

It had been so simple to ask it, but that night as they readied for bed she considered how monumental even the thought was. The two of them, committing to a home together, somewhere that would be part of both of them, and just for them. And possibly a family, if that was something they both wanted. She paused in the hall, watching Jaime through the door of the bathroom while he brushed his teeth. He was wearing a plain white undershirt and plaid boxers, his hair – turned to sunflower-gold by their time in the summer sun – was getting shaggy at the ends, and he'd left a dollop of toothpaste on the sink edge that she knew he'd forget to clean up. His eyes flickered over to hers in the mirror and he smiled around his toothbrush, as happy to see her in the five minutes they'd been apart as he was after a whole day. 

“I want a big window that looks out on the sea,” she said, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “Our house. That's my only requirement.” 

He pulled the toothbrush out of his mouth. “Your _only_ one?” he asked doubtfully. 

“And it has to have you,” she said, because it was true and she wanted to see his face light up. He turned and advanced, grinning with toothpaste still around his mouth like he was rabid and she shrieked as he lunged for her. She smelled like mint all night. 

A few days later, the break was over. 

They woke up too early Monday morning and arrived at the offices before anyone else so they could unlock every door and prepare for the second part of the season. Jaime left to go finish the last of the opening activities while Brienne spent extra time with her car, wiping the body clean, checking the engine. When she was done, she crouched down near the front wing and laid her hand on it. Her ring clinked quietly when she did. 

“Seven more races,” she said softly. “We can do this.” 

The door opened and Brienne looked up to see Addam step inside. 

“Where's my future best-friend-in-law?” he boomed loudly, his face split with a beaming smile. 

Brienne laughed a little and stood. “Hi,” she said, “how was your--” her question was swallowed up as he strode over and engulfed her in a huge hug. 

“Congratulations,” he said at a more normal volume before letting her go. He grinned at her. “I didn't think that idiot was ever going to ask you.” 

“The idiot is right here,” Jaime said dryly from the door. 

“So,” Addam said, ignoring Jaime, “he didn't give me any details. Was it somewhere nice? Did he at least beg a little?”

Brienne smiled over Addam's shoulder at Jaime. “It was perfect.” 

“Are you wearing the ring now?” She held out her hand and he looked it over, nodding. “It's beautiful, and just right on you. Don't tell him I said that.”

“Still right here,” Jaime said. 

“Did you hear something?” Addam winked at her. “How was your break?”

“Eventful,” Brienne said. “How was yours?” 

“Much less so, but fantastic nonetheless.” Addam turned then and threw his arms wide. “Jaime! There you are!”

Jaime rolled his eyes and shoved Addam in the shoulder. “I can't believe I saddled my fiancée with you as her trainer and principal.” 

“Co-principal. And she has a name, you know, she's not just your fiancée.” 

“How on earth did Dacey put up with you for four weeks?”

“Very athletically,” Addam said with a sly smile, and Brienne dropped her forehead to her hand and snorted.

“I see why Bronn is annoyed at me all the time,” Jaime said, grinning. He and Addam hugged and traded stories about their breaks, each man trying to outdo the other in the Innuendo World Championship, as the rest of the crew slowly filtered in. For those who had stayed on Tarth – Podrick, Bronn, and a few of the others – there were quick hugs before getting straight to work. For the rest, Brienne was their first stop to share their own congratulations and look at the ring, to gently tease one or both of them, and then to say hello and swap stories with the others. 

An hour into it, overwhelmed and needing some quiet, Brienne slipped from the garage to head back to the offices. 

“Brienne!” Addam called when she was a short distance away. “Wait up.” He jogged to catch up with her and they walked together towards her and Jaime's shared office. It was a cloudless day, and the sun was warm, although the crisp hint of oncoming fall was already in the air. Summers on Tarth were extraordinary, but they didn't last long. “I should probably give you the standard best friend speech. You know, 'hurt him and I'll wish all your favorite sports teams almost make the playoffs but eternally fall short' sort of thing.” 

“You have a surprising mean streak.”

He flashed her a grin. “Fortunately for both of us, I don't have to do that with you. I know I was out of his life for a long time, but I care about him and he hasn't had a lot of people who do.” Addam rubbed the back of his neck, looking pensive. “Honestly I wish someone had given _me_ that speech back when Jaime was going through all the Aerys stuff.”

They stopped outside of the offices and she squeezed his arm. “You were young, too,” she said. “You should tell him that, though, if you haven't.” 

“We've talked around it. Might be time to be a little more direct.” His face softened, the thin angles smoothing into a vulnerability that Brienne wasn't sure she'd ever seen on Addam's face. It made him look younger, someone who felt things more deeply than his implacably cheerful demeanor might suggest. “This is exactly what I mean, though. If I could have picked anyone in the world for Jaime, it would have been you. Thank you for being there for him, especially when no one else was.”

Brienne blinked back tears, and then a few more when Addam hugged her tightly. “It's been mostly my pleasure,” she managed to say, and felt Addam laugh. He kissed her on the cheek before pulling away. 

“I could give Jaime the cursed-sports-team speech, though.” 

“You don't need to,” she said, smiling a little. 

“No, I don't. If I didn't love you both so much, it would be kind of annoying.” He was all charm again, but she could see the edges of it better now, how he used the easy facade to shadow how very much he cared. 

“Lucky for us, then,” she said. 

“Indeed. I'll see you this afternoon for our White Harbor run-through. I blocked out extra time because I expect you'll be a little rusty after the break. Summer slump, happens to all of us.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Addam gave her a small, jaunty salute and hurried back to the garage. 

Even with having to build up momentum again after the time off, it didn't take much for the entire team to be firing on all cylinders. If anything, they all felt turbo-charged that week, the break having done everyone a world of good. The energy around the Evenstar Racing campus was electric as they prepared for their first post-break race at White Harbor. 

Wednesday evening, while Jaime finished up some last items with Bronn and the mechanic crew and then had a late-night interview with an outlet in Astapor, Brienne had dinner with her father alone. Elenda was frequently at her dad's house, but they hadn't officially moved in together and she often would spend a couple of evenings on her own each week. She'd told Brienne once that she'd been married for a long time and wasn't ready to give up her new independence entirely. 

“You're off to White Harbor tomorrow?” her dad asked after a pleasant dinner. They'd fallen into familiar patterns, her father making the food and Brienne cleaning up after. They were in the living room now, resting on his couch while they continued the conversation. There was a lot less space for the two of them as adults than there had been when she'd been a teenager and they'd share a bowl of popcorn and watch races together, but it still felt comfortable. 

“Yeah. Weather's supposed to be pretty nice. It should be a relatively easy run.” Brienne spun her glass of sparkling water on its coaster.

“You're still enjoying driving?”

“More every race,” she admitted. “I love it.” 

Her dad made a deep-chested grunt and she glanced up at him. “What?” she asked. 

“Nothing.”

“I'm not going to give this up, Dad, especially not halfway through the season.” 

“It never crossed my mind,” he said. Brienne shot him a doubtful look and his mouth slid into a self-deprecating half-smile. “Not seriously, at least.” 

“Have you thought about coming to watch me drive?”

The lines on his face deepened. “No.” 

“White Harbor's a pretty mellow track. That would be a good one to start with.” She looked hopefully at him, but it was impossible to miss the stubborn set of his jaw. Brienne knew she had the same look when she'd made up her mind about something; Jaime had pointed it out often enough. 

“I told you at the start of this, I can't do it.”

“Dad, I'm not going to cr--”

“Don't even say it,” he interrupted firmly. “Warrior, just ignore my foolish, fate-tempting daughter.”

Brienne rolled her eyes. “When did you get so superstitious?”

“When my last living child decided to climb into a death rocket.” 

_Ouch_. She sighed. “I wish you'd come to one race before the end of the season.” 

“I wish you'd stop driving, but that's not going to come true either.” His tone was soft enough that it smoothed some of the jagged bitterness of the words. But she still felt the scrape of them. 

“It would mean a lot to me to share this with you,” she said quietly.

“I can't,” he said, unyielding, though when she looked over at him he was staring into the distance. The bright headlight and engine noise from Jaime's bike washed through the windows, and Selwyn looked up. “I think I'm going to call it an early night,” he said. 

The cable box said it was only eight-thirty, but Brienne allowed the brush-off. She wasn't in the mood to fight, either. 

She stood and kissed him quickly on the top of his head. “Good night, Dad” she said, hiding her disappointment. 

“Good night, darling.” 

Jaime was leaving the garage when she exited, and he slipped his arm around her as they walked back to her house. But even his warm embrace couldn't quite soothe away the disappointment that her father refused to budge.

* * *

White Harbor was a city of the sea, one drowning in images of mermaids and monsters from the deep, where fish was the first thing you smelled in the morning and salt the last thing you smelled at night. They stayed this time at a middle-of-the-road hotel about as far from the Lazy Eel as they could get, though whether Brienne had requested that of Shireen specifically or not, Jaime wasn't sure. It was strange to be back in the city with Brienne again and be unafraid of taking her hand in the street, of kissing her softly in the garage. He felt a little gunshy from it, and Addam's nerves at the track that he'd crashed so severely at last year didn't help, either. 

It didn't seem to hold back Brienne, at least, who qualified at P-5 and then eagerly faced down the media for a routine post-qualifying interview session. 

“Brienne!” Melisandre said, and Brienne nodded her way. “Congratulations to you two, first of all.” 

Jaime smirked at the murmurs of congratulations from all those assembled. It was especially ironic coming from Melisandre, who had been happy to throw them under the bus at winter testing, but she'd come through since then and kept her promises on the At Home With Evenstar Racing documentary that had aired over the break. It had been an hour long instead of the initially proposed half-hour, and it had included a tour of their facilities, interviews with Selwyn, Addam, Bronn, and Arya, a review of Brienne's season so far, and the rest had been dedicated to the interview with Jaime and Brienne. WSN had aired it a week after news of their engagement hit, and Melisandre had texted them the next day saying: 'You saved my job with that timing' and a report on the ratings, which had been extraordinarily high. 

“Thank you,” Brienne said with the shy, happy smile that never seemed far from her face these days. 

“You've made it now through the first part of a long season. Any predictions for the back set of races?”

“Just that my team will continue to outdo themselves in supporting me, and I hope that I can do them proud.” 

“What about you, Jaime?” one of the other journalists jumped in. “You made a prediction at the beginning of the season that Brienne would get a first place win, and she hasn't even gotten a podium yet. Do you still hold to that?” 

Jaime's smile tightened, remembering how upset Brienne had been with him when he'd done that. “I predict that Brienne will continue to prove all the doubters wrong.”

“But you're backing down from your earlier statement?” 

He hesitated, weighing the consequences of how to respond, when Brienne cut in. “Have you ever heard of Jaime Lannister backing down from anything?” The group laughed and she pointed at Peck. 

“Have you made any significant engineering changes to your car since the race at Pyke?” Peck asked, and Jaime felt the tension slip away as attention went back to where it belonged, on Brienne and her car. 

After a few more minutes, Pia shooed the reporters away and they filtered off, except for Melisandre and Peck, who was waiting for Pia. “You guys can head back to the hotel,” Pia said, linking her arm with Peck's. “We're going to go do some rounds of the other constructors.” She pointed a finger at Melisandre. “Nothing on the record for the rest of the afternoon,” she said sternly. 

“May the Lord of Light strike me down if I do,” Melisandre said with a wry smile. She turned to Jaime and Brienne. “Well, let me see it.” Brienne frowned and the other woman laughed a little and gestured at her hand. 

“Oh!” Brienne held out her hand with the ring, shooting Jaime a happy smile. 

“Simple but lovely. Well done, Jaime.” 

“I have my moments,” he said. “Thanks again for the documentary, it came out well. I've actually had a few amputees reach out to me because of it. You did some good in the world.”

“The good was yours, I was just there to capture it,” Melisandre said. “I notice that you've got a guard dog walking around with you these days, Brienne.” She gestured elegantly towards Sandor, who was waiting in the back of the garage, arms folded across his chest and a scowl on his face, to walk Brienne back through the crowds to the bus. “Expecting trouble?”

Jaime searched Melisandre's hands, but she'd put away all of her recording devices. Still, he didn't completely trust her yet. “Other drivers have security, too, especially when they're walking through the fans. Robb always keeps Karstark with him even going through the paddocks. You know how it is when drivers get more popular.” 

“You haven't really chosen a fan-friendly face.”

“I don't have a fan-friendly face,” Brienne said. Jaime frowned at her, but she looked amused and light, so he let it lie. She'd been talking to Dr. Tarly occasionally, too, and he seemed to be helping her as much as he'd helped Jaime. 

“The fans have been much more welcoming to you lately.”

“Now that I'm doing well, yes. But if I'd been in the bottom ten consistently instead of the top ten, my experience would look very different. You don't see the Nightfort drivers getting that kind of blowback even though they're often at the rear of the pack.”

“You're sure this conversation has to be off the record?”

“Do _you_ want to cross Pia?” Jaime asked and Melisandre laughed delicately. 

“Fair enough. I'd love to talk to you about it should you ever be willing to go on the record with it.” 

“After the season is over,” Brienne said. “Right now I just want to focus on the racing.”

“Any more challenges from Robb Stark?”

“He wants to have a hatchet-throwing contest,” Brienne said, sounding mystified. Jaime didn't blame her; it was an oddly specific skill and not one he would have thought Robb would have, but maybe he just wanted an even playing field where they both were equally bad at something. 

“An unexpected choice.” 

“He'll still regret it,” Jaime said and Brienne just shrugged. Sandor hulked closer to them and Melisandre smirked. 

“Looks like I've overstayed my welcome. Thank you again for trusting me with the documentary, and truly, I wish you both the best. If you need a media outlet to send exclusive pictures to, you have my number.” 

Jaime chuckled, but he had to admire her drive. “She's gonna own that network someday,” he said as they walked back through the thinning crowds, Brienne in-between him and Sandor. Even with the smaller crowd, Jaime was surprised more people didn't come up to them, until he looked at Sandor. It wasn't the man's scars so much as the fearsome snarl he fired in all directions that kept not just enemies but friendly fans at bay. They might have to have a conversation with him soon so Brienne didn't miss out on the good parts of the experience, too. 

When they arrived back at the hotel, Jaime spotted Addam sitting in the small hotel bar, drinking alone and watching the replays of the day's qualifying runs. Jaime tugged Brienne to a stop and kissed her quickly. “I'll be up later,” he said, and she followed his line of sight and nodded. 

“Take your time,” she said warmly. 

There were only four stools at the bar, but the only one occupied was Addam's at the end. Jaime slid onto the stool next to him and scanned the small selection of alcohol along the back row. 

“Don't order the whiskey,” Addam said conversationally. “It's not great.” 

“Where's the bartender?”

“He's not great either,” Addam said with a small laugh. “What's up?”

Jaime rested his elbows on the bar and watched the screen, too. They were showing the top three right now, and a full list of the grid to the side. There was Brienne: P5-TAR. His heart thumped with pride. “I'm checking on you. I don't recall you being a solitary drinker.” 

“I'm not usually.”

“Do you want some company?”

He felt Addam glance at him, but he kept his eyes on the screen, watching Slynt's Q1 spinout. “Sure,” Addam finally said. 

The bartender eventually returned from wherever he'd disappeared to and a few minutes later Jaime was drinking a Black and Tan. It wasn't great, either, but it was good enough, and he was more interested in the conversation with Addam anyway as they talked Brienne's qualifying runs that afternoon and how the other drivers had handled the track. 

Onscreen, the commentators were talking about Brienne's run now, and the camera focused on a shot of Addam for a minute before flashing to a clip of his car crashing in free practice from last season. Jaime looked over at his friend, and he was watching, too, his eyes intent and narrowed, his mouth pressed together tightly. 

“You don't have to watch that,” Jaime said. 

“I've seen it before. A couple of times this week, actually.” 

“Then why are you watching it again?”

The announcers were onscreen once more, talking about the weather forecast and pre-race activities and Addam turned fully to face Jaime. “Because in three weeks you're going to have to watch Harrenhal footage.” 

Jaime's stomach dropped, curled into a tight and nauseous ball. The missing space where his hand had been, where his prosthetic was now, throbbed. “Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

He had known, of course, that Harrenhal was on the schedule, but it had been so far away for so many months that it had been easy to ignore it, to ignore what it would mean to be back on that track. Now there was the White Harbor Grand Prix tomorrow, Highgarden in two weeks, and then Harrenhal a week later. 

“Have you watched your crash?” Addam asked quietly. 

“No.” 

“Having watched the one that inadvertently ended my own career, it's not going to be easy.” Addam downed the rest of his second drink. “But I felt like I needed to so I could focus when we were on the track. You don't have to, of course. We could make a plan for having you work from the paddock, and I can take on all of the track review work the week before with Brienne.”

“Should I just stay home, instead?” Jaime asked sharply, and Addam frowned at him. 

“If you think it would help.”

“I can help her without having to watch myself--” Jaime swallowed. “Without having to watch that.”

“You don't think it'll come up? No one will ask you about it?”

“If it does, I can handle it.”

“Have you ever even watched Aerys' crash?” Addam asked pointedly, and Jaime bit back a slicing retort. “I didn't think so.” 

“That's different.” 

“It's not.” Addam shook his head, motioned for the bartender to get him a third drink. “Both of those crashes changed your life. If you can't face them, you probably shouldn't even be at the track at all – it will only distract Brienne.” 

“How is not being there any better?”

“It wasn't easy for me to be there today, Jaime; it was worse yesterday during free practice. Do you really think you'll be able to just saunter back to Harrenhal like nothing happened?”

“I'm not going to abandon Brienne.” 

Addam lifted his fresh drink in a toast. “I'm not going to let you mess up her race. So you better prepare yourself for what you need to do.” 

Jaime sighed and ordered another drink himself. They sat quietly next to each other, with the noise of their pasts at their side.

* * *

“You have to get up very early in the morning to pass around Oberyn Martell on the outside,” the announcer was saying into the camera outside of the weigh-in room, interviewing Oberyn next to him. “What did you think of Brienne Tarth's performance today?” 

Oberyn smiled into the camera, all charm and sex appeal. “She must have been up at the crack of dawn,” he drawled, and Jaime beamed from where he was waiting for her to emerge. It had been an incredible race: she'd had a minor collision on the first lap but had come back from P-13 to snatch P-4 from Oberyn's skilled hands, using an overtake on the outside of a curve that Jaime had admittedly been skeptical she could do. Even he would have needed a little luck on his side to do it when he was driving.

Even better, Lancel had gotten caught up in the same collision and had only recovered to P-8, putting them back in striking distance of Lannister Corp once again. 

Oberyn finished his interview just as Brienne emerged from the building and he strode over to them, smirking. “Quite a pass you made on me there,” he said to Brienne. Jaime rolled his eyes, but it was hard to take offense when Oberyn always sounded like he was one step away from propositioning everyone. 

“It was a good race,” she said. 

“Did you teach her that one, Lannister?”

“Do you think I'm going to share my mentoring secrets with you, Martell?”

“Perhaps for a price?”

Jaime snorted and slipped his arm around Brienne's waist. She was sweaty against him, and he could feel she still had post-race exhaustion trembling through her, even minutes later. “Brienne is her own driver,” Jaime said. “Whatever she learned from me, she's making hers. Do you think I would have been patient enough to wait for that last turn?”

Oberyn laughed and shook his head. “Fair point. You're very good, Tarth. That was an impressive race. Do you think you'll be driving again next season for Evenstar?”

Brienne, red-cheeked and glowing, glanced at Jaime. “We're just focused on this year for now.”

“We should talk once the season is done,” Oberyn said. “About potential future opportunities. If it's okay with your race engineer, of course.” 

“Excuse you, I prefer 'Future Mr. Lannister-Tarth,'” Jaime said, and shared a knowing laugh with Oberyn when Brienne covered her face with her hands. 

“So I've heard. Congratulations on your pending nuptials.” He looked like he was about to say more, but Jaime lifted one very loud eyebrow and Oberyn just inclined his head. “I'll see you in Highgarden, Tarth. Don't expect to be able to pull that maneuver on me again.” 

As he walked off, she called out, “I'll have to pull some new ones, then,” and Oberyn threw his head back, laughing. 

Jaime kissed her quickly on the cheek, unable to contain himself, and took her helmet and neck gear. “Come on,” he said, “I feel like you need a post-race rub-down.” 

“I wouldn't say no to one,” she murmured and they started off down the pit lane with their arms around each other. Jaime could hear cameras snapping their pictures, but Brienne was still relaxed at his side, tired but smiling. She was comfortable with Jaime's casual touches now, and every time she didn't tense up or pull away, it untied another small knot in his heart. 

Before they reached the garages, Jaime caught a flash of movement in the dark alley-like space in-between buildings. He saw Lancel sitting there in the shadows, his knees drawn up, cradling his head in his hands. 

“Can you give me a few minutes?” he asked Brienne. “I need to talk to someone.” 

“Sure. I'll meet you back at the garage. Addam will probably want to start debrief soon, he's off to see Dacey tonight.” 

“Get started without me, I shouldn't be too long behind.” He kissed her goodbye – which she returned with warmth he felt in his toes – and then aimed for the alleyway, walking slowly up. Lancel didn't seem to know he was there, because when Jaime said, “Everything all right?” the other man jerked his head around abruptly. 

“What are you doing here?” Lancel asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Checking on you.” 

Lancel sneered. “What a loving cousin you are.” 

“You don't have to keep racing for him,” Jaime said quietly. He thought about sitting down next to Lancel, but the familiarity felt off. They weren't friends – they were barely family – and pretending they were would only make Lancel more suspicious. 

“Fuck off, Jaime. You never cared about the family, only yourself.” 

“Do you think I wanted it to come to this? This is my father's fault, not mine.” 

“He's easy to blame, isn't he? But he's not the one who made you try to ruin the entire company. The family legacy.”

“Do you really give a shit about the family legacy?” Jaime asked, low and bitter. “What good does it do any of us if it's bought on the backs of every Lannister that's left?”

“You never understood.”

“That a name was more important than the people who inherited it? You're godsdamned right I don't understand that.”

Lancel stared down at his hands, clenched into tight fists on his knees. “This is my chance to make a name for myself as a Lannister. I can save everything. I'm not giving up.” 

“Lancel.” His cousin met his stare, the pale green of his eyes dancing with a strange sort of zealotry. “Get out now, before my father takes you down, too.” 

For a moment the fire in Lancel's eyes flickered, like a wind coming to blow it out; but it re-ignited with more fury a moment later. Jaime's words had only added oxygen. Lancel scrambled to his feet and stepped into Jaime's space. He was shorter than Jaime and not as broad, but he poked Jaime hard in the chest. “Your bitch will never beat me,” he seethed, and Jaime inhaled sharply through his nose, his hand curling into a fist. “_You_ will never beat me again.” Lancel slammed his shoulder into Jaime's as he hurried past. 

“Lancel,” Jaime called, and the other man hesitated on the edge of the light. “It's not your fault, if it all goes bad.” 

Jaime was watching closely enough he saw the way Lancel's shoulders pulled upward, like they could block out Jaime's words, but he hurried off into the heat without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jencat for the snowmobile racing idea! Is Jon Snow Valterri Bottas? I'm not saying he is, but I'm not saying he's not, either.


	44. September (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I could live with the secrecy better than Jaime. But now that I don't have to, I see what a pale shadow it would have been even if we were both all right with it. When you have to hide your love from everyone, you hide part of it from yourself, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting two chapters again this week. September ended up needing to be split into three parts when I thought I could get it in two, and I really want these next two chapters to be near each other. This is another one where pieces are being laid for what's to come, so I didn't want to rest on it for two weeks before part 3. :)

**Lannister Corp: 111 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 108 pts**

Highgarden was lovely at summer's end, the late-blooming roses carefully prepared for prime color and presentation. Brienne had had an aversion to roses ever since her time with Griffin, but when Jaime illicitly plucked one from the carefully tended decorations near the track and handed it to her with a small bow, she was happy to take it and bring its sweet smell to her nose and not think of Connington at all. 

On Friday after free practice, she met Robb in the green space in the middle of the track for their competition. He was there with Jon – whom Brienne couldn't look at now without thinking of how Jaime described him as having “resting grump face” – and Robb's race engineer, Raynald Westerling, as well as the tall, ginger-haired mechanic that had hit on her at Tywin's party. Tormund, she remembered. They hadn't crossed paths directly since then, and she hadn't missed his lascivious stare at the track. But it was easy to ignore him when she saw who else was there as well. 

“Sansa!” Brienne said, delighted. “What are you doing here? Highgarden is a long way from Winterfell.”

“Robb would not shut up about this in the group text and I wanted to come see you kick his ass in person.”

“Hey!” Robb glared at her. 

“I'm also here for Margaery,” she said, which mollified Robb at least a little from the look of it. 

“Employment aside, you're here to support me, right?” Robb directed to Arya, who had walked over with Pia, Jaime, and Brienne. 

“Nah, I just didn't want to miss your spectacular defeat.” 

“Wow,” Robb said, holding his hands out to the side. “What happened to family loyalty? What happened to 'the pack survives'?” 

Both women gave their brother matching disdainful looks and Brienne huffed a small laugh. 

“Fine,” Robb said, and it was clear his peevishness was mostly just for show. “Let's get this started. Jon agreed to judge for us, he's very trustworthy.” 

Tormund sauntered over to Jaime and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him like he was encouraging the comparison. Brienne's gaze skated over both of them, caught the mischievous glint in Jaime's eye, and she shook her head a little, _no_. Whatever he was thinking of doing or saying, it could only lead to trouble. 

“Ladies first,” Robb said, holding out a hatchet handle out. “Three tries each, whoever gets the most points on the target wins.” 

“Easy enough,” she said, even though she'd never actually thrown anything like this before. “Are you ready for us, Pia?”

Pia held up her phone. “Ready! Start anytime.”

_It can't be that hard_, Brienne thought, before winding up and hurling it with as much force as she could against the wood. It clunked off and fell to the ground. The next two did the same. 

“Not an auspicious start,” Robb commented, collecting the hatchets. His loose confidence made her suddenly wary that this was not going to turn out well for her. She was proved right a few seconds later when he casually wound up and sunk the axe one ring out from the bullseye. “Twenty points! That's enough to win it.” But he threw the other two anyway, both sticking. 

“I feel like you sharked me,” Brienne grumbled as she yanked the hatchets out of the wood and stepped back to the line. She hurled the hatchet as hard as she could at the target and watched it bounce off again. “Why don't mine stick?”

“It's all in the wrist,” Robb said. 

“What does that even mean?”

“I can't give you my secrets.” When Brienne hefted the hatchet threateningly at him he just grinned. 

“Why didn't you warn me?” she asked Arya. 

“I didn't know he could do this,” she said with a shrug. 

“I picked it up a couple of summer breaks ago. It's a good meditative practice, you should look into it, little wolf.”

“Ugh,” Arya scoffed. “Don't call me that.” 

Tormund walked up to Brienne, still wearing that uncomfortably familiar smile. “I could show you how to move your body if you want.” 

When she glanced at Jaime, he was grinning, amused and unconcerned. “I'm fine, thanks,” Brienne said. 

Tormund plucked the hatchet from her hand and turned and threw quickly, sinking it near the bullseye. It was, she had to admit, impressive. “I'm the one who taught Robb,” he said, looking hopefully back at her. 

“You know I'm engaged, right?” she blurted, and Tormund laughed. 

“Sure I do. Just means you're not married yet,” he said, winking at her. Arya punched him in the arm and he grunted. “I was just joking,” he complained. 

They stayed for a while, and Brienne did pick up a few tricks from Tormund from a respectable distance, until she could at least get the hatchet to reliably stick in the wood when she threw it. Jaime tried, too – awkward with his left arm, but he applied himself with the determined focus he'd used learning to drive his motorcycle again, until he also was able to strike more than half the time. He laughed easily over his misses, joking with Robb and even getting Jon to loosen up. Brienne enjoyed watching Jaime as much as she did talking with Sansa and trying to talk her down from too intense of a bachelorette party. 

“We don't even have a date picked yet,” Brienne said at one point, when Sansa was trying to figure out how many hours they would need. 

“I'm just pre-planning. Besides, we won't need to know weather, Dorne is beautiful all year.” Brienne blinked and re-considered asking Arya to plan the whole thing. 

Eventually, Sandor stalked across the track to tell them to “stop fucking around, the bus is leaving,” and Jaime, Brienne, Arya, and Pia said their goodbyes. 

Before they left, Sandor scooped up one of the discarded hatchets and, so casually it was like an afterthought, hucked it at the board. It was a perfect bullseye. 

“What?” he said as the entire gathering gaped at him in astonishment. “Fuck, it's a basic skill. Everybody should know how to throw a hatchet. Hurry up, I don't want to miss happy hour at the hotel bar.”

“What on earth did he do before he worked for Lannister Corp?” Brienne asked Jaime quietly as Sandor stormed back to the garages, the rest of them trailing after. 

“I have no idea,” he said in a matching tone. “But I'm glad he's on our side.”

* * *

The Evenstar Racing team was packing up after the post-race debrief on Sunday when Renly Baratheon appeared in the hallway, looking uncomfortable. His hair was wet, though it was likely from a shower and not the champagne he'd been sprayed with on the podium for his third place win. 

Lancel had been the one who sprayed him from his spot at P-2. 

“Hello,” Renly said when the crew nearest the door stared at him. He searched out Brienne and looked hopefully at her. “Brienne, do you have some time to talk?” 

She glanced at Jaime and Addam who both shrugged. “We're done with the debrief,” Addam said. 

“You all can head back to the hotel and I'll just get a cab for myself.” 

“Sandor has to drive the bus, he won't be able to stay,” Jaime reminded her, his unspoken worry clear. 

“It'll be fine,” Brienne said firmly, and though he looked like he wanted to protest further, he let it lie, squeezing her hand hard on his way out the door once all the others had left. 

“Have a seat,” Brienne said, pointing at one of the now empty conference chairs. “Congratulations on your podium today.”

“Thanks.” Renly smiled but it lacked the easy confidence and charm he usually displayed. “Nice race on your part, too. P-4 is excellent, especially for a rookie.” 

It _was_ great, far better than could be expected of any rookie, let alone one without the extensive karting background of every other driver, not to mention her smaller team. But with Lancel's second-place showing, it put them further behind Lannister Corp again. Her desperate desire to win was still there, though it was no longer because she didn't want to let Jaime down out of fear. Now she wanted it as a gift for him – and equally for herself, too. 

Brienne nodded her gratitude and shifted her chair around so they were facing each other. It was, admittedly, surreal to be sitting here with Renly Baratheon and feeling at ease. Even when she'd first met him last year as Jaime's mechanic, Brienne had been overwhelmed by his presence, by the years she'd spent being a fan of his before she'd even gotten the chance to work on his F3 team. He was the same, but she was very different. 

“What did you want to talk about?” she asked, too curious to try to find a less direct way to get to the point. 

Renly smiled a little. “I'm sure it must be quite a surprise to see me here.” 

“You're welcome to visit any time, of course.”

“I suspected I would be.” He drummed his fingers on the conference table, fiddled with a leftover scrap of paper nearby. She let him work out whatever it was that he'd come for in silence. Finally Renly took a deep breath. “Loras seems to believe you can be trusted.” 

“I like to think so,” she said cautiously. 

“You and Jaime kept your relationship secret for awhile, didn't you?”

Brienne blinked at him, startled. “Uh.”

“I know you haven't officially admitted to anything, but they did show those pictures of the two of you outside that motel.”

“They did,” she agreed, flushing. 

“How did you deal with it? Keeping it quiet?” 

_Ah_, she thought, understanding why he'd come. She'd known just from being in the same room with Renly and Loras that the rumors about their relationship must be true; seeing her and Jaime go through their own secret relationship troubles must have felt painfully familiar. Brienne thought of hotel rooms and frantic kisses, of Jaime's urgency and her own fears and wondered if Renly and Loras had been having the same struggles. 

“Not well,” she admitted. “It was difficult. For both of us, but in different ways. Jaime's not...” She didn't know how to explain the way Jaime's every touch was a declaration, or how much she had needed to hear it. If he had been more muted, they never would have gotten here. “He doesn't hide his feelings well. I hid mine too well. Being public about our relationship has made everything easier.” 

“Even the media response? The fan comments?” Renly's eyes were electric in their intensity. 

“Yes. Once I realized they were going to say those things anyway, it was absurd to not face them together.”

“But what if no one would find out _unless_ you told them? What if you'd been so careful that to come out would bring attention you don't currently have?”

She chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. “When we were trying to keep it secret,” she started slowly, “I think if I knew that we could have kept it that way I would have chosen that. I was afraid of having to deal with all of the backlash, for both of us, and our careers. I could have convinced myself it was better to have _something_, even if it had to be hidden from everyone. Now that we're open about it, looking back on that life seems unbearable.” Renly's eyes flickered downward. “It's easy for me to say from here, of course. Especially now that we're engaged and the media is supporting us like they didn't spend weeks tearing me down. And certain... situations are even more difficult for people to accept.”

Renly rubbed his hand over his face and sat back in his chair. “They are,” he said, and there was no sign of the normally ebullient man to him at all. 

“I don't know what advice to give you. All I can tell you is that it depends on you and him and what you both can handle.” He didn't deny her use of 'him,' but she hadn't expected he would. “I could live with the secrecy better than Jaime. But now that I don't have to, I see what a pale shadow it would have been even if we were both all right with it. When you have to hide your love from everyone, you hide part of it from yourself, too. But I know the consequences could be serious for both of you, even more than they were for us.”

“It's too bad people are such assholes,” Renly said, his voice lighter with dry resignation, and Brienne smiled a little. 

“It really is. But it's not all of them, either. You'd be surprised at the people who will appear to support you. I certainly was.”

Renly nodded and clapped his hands on his knees. “Thank you for your time, Brienne. I should let you get back.”

“Renly,” she asked just before he left the room. “Why did you ask me and not Jaime?”

He tilted his head a little. “Because you and I are very similar on this subject. Loras is...” She recognized the look on Renly's face all too well. “If it were up to him, we'd both quit racing and run off to Essos.”

“That doesn't sound so bad sometimes,” Brienne said, and Renly laughed. 

“It doesn't. But I see you, and you have both Jaime and racing and it made me think-- maybe that could be me.” He waved a hand, brushing away the hope and quiet desperation. “The season's almost over at least. It can wait.” 

“You should make sure he can,” she said, and Renly pursed his lips and nodded. 

“Thanks again,” he said. He lifted his hand in goodbye and left the conference room and Brienne looked around at the empty seats and imagined being in this moment but still trying to hide her feelings for Jaime. She rubbed her finger over her ring, the cool smoothness of the metal, and said a small prayer of thanks to the Seven that she'd gotten out of her own way long enough to be happy. She knew Loras and Renly faced a whole different set of challenges, but she hoped they'd find a way to make it work for them, too. 

The conference door opened again and Arya entered unexpectedly. 

“What are you still doing here?”

“Jaime asked me to wait for you so we could go back together.”

“Were you supposed to tell me that?”

“Oh, definitely not.” Arya grinned fiercely. “But I figured you're not an idiot, so I wouldn't treat you like one.” 

Brienne snorted. “Then as my duly-appointed escort, shall we head back? I need to chew out my fiancé for worrying too much about me.”

“You shouldn't be too hard on him. Tywin Lannister is a scary fuck.”

She thought of him on the cliff's edge and how the fleeting idea that he might just push her over it had not been entirely unbelievable. “Fair enough,” Brienne said. “I think Jaime would be surprised to hear you taking his side. Surprised and smug.” 

“Well,” Arya said, holding the door open with a flourish and a conspiratorial smile. “Let's not tell him.”

* * *

Tuesday afternoon, Jaime was sitting in the office answering emails when Brienne walked in and stood there, staring at him. 

“What?” he asked, frowning at the monitor as he typed. He'd managed to develop a rhythm of two-finger typing with his natural and prosthetic index fingers that worked surprisingly well and at least let him mostly keep up with the flood of emails every day. 

“We have a meeting.”

Jaime glanced at the clock on the screen and sighed. “How is it already two? I feel like we just got in. Give me a minute to finish this message.” She did, sitting on the edge of her desk and still watching him. It made his skin itch, so he paused and looked at her. “What's going on?”

“Our meeting is for track review.”

A frisson of understanding tripped through him. Track review meant watching footage, and watching footage meant-- 

Jaime inhaled slowly. “Right.”

“For Harrenhal,” Brienne added 

“I'm aware.” 

“Have you watched any of the footage yet?” 

Jaime focused on his email again. “I haven't had time.” That was only partially true; they both knew he could have made time. “I've been thinking: why are we using footage where I crashed to review the track? Let's use a race I actually made it all the way through.” 

“They made gradient and curve adjustments before last year's race,” she reminded him, though he'd known that already, too. Since Brienne had never raced before this year, they'd been relying on Jaime's runs to provide the most recent information and strategies, and because tracks could change between seasons, last year's were always their first choice. 

“Then I suppose we should use it,” he admitted. Jaime finished off the email and faced Brienne. She was still watching him, quiet and sympathetic. 

“Do you want to watch it alone the first time?” she asked. “I won't be offended.”

“No,” he said quickly. Even the idea of it sounded terrible. 

“Is there something we can do to make it easier?”

“You could come sit in my lap.”

“Jaime,” she said, laughing almost reluctantly. “No. But I _will_ sit next to you.”

“If you insist.”

“I do,” she said firmly. Brienne pulled the extra chair next to his behind his desk, and watched him click through his folders to where they had all of their race footage uploaded. There in simple black and white text was a folder labeled simply: Harrenhal. 

Jaime confidently opened it, as well as the file inside with his name and last year's date, but when the movie came up, he hesitated over the Play button. His arm and hand were locked, unable to move forward, not willing to move back. 

Brienne squeezed his shoulder. “Do you remember what lap it was?” Her voice was low and calm, grounding him as much as her touch was. 

“It was after the pit stop. About halfway through the race, right?”

She nodded. “I can warn you when it's coming up. Unless you want to just jump right to it.”

He didn't want any part of this at all, could feel his breathing going wild out from under the tight control he'd thought he had. _Focus on the details_, he reminded himself. Brienne's eyes were a steady and soothing blue; he could feel all five of her fingers pressed firm into his back, holding him up. Her other hand was sitting on top of the desk near his, and he counted the eight stones on her ring and exhaled slowly. 

“Let's just get it over with,” he said, fast forwarding to his car pulling in to box. When he finally clicked play, the roar of the crowd was loud in their office and louder still in his memory. There was the remembered taste of adrenaline on his tongue, the phantom of both hands gripping the wheel, and the echo of the tangled fury and hurt he'd been driving with like a knot in his chest. Had it only been a year ago that she'd pushed him away in his driver's room, when he'd been so certain she wanted to stay? 

At his side, Brienne murmured something he couldn't make out, but it soothed his tender nerves nonetheless. Her hand on the desk covered his wrist, containing him in the structure of her arms, but he didn't feel trapped. 

Onscreen, his car pulled out of the pit stop and he couldn't stop the tense curl of his lip when he spotted Vargo Hoat running back into the garage. But the camera didn't leave time for focusing on Hoat, it was following Jaime out of the pit lane, on a collision that he would never avoid. Everything but the image onscreen went still, and time stretched out in-between heartbeats. 

The crash happened faster than Jaime expected, so quickly he almost missed Ramsay's swerve entirely. That had been the piece he'd hardly even seen; all he recalled was pulling out of the pit lane and seeing Ramsay in his mirror at a safe distance before Ramsay's tire was suddenly aiming for Jaime's car. Jaime had reacted purely on instinct, swerving to avoid the other driver's car. 

Everything after that was a blur of sensation and a vague, shocked horror. 

In the video, his car rolled multiple times before slamming into the wall and Jaime gasped at the throbbing pain that flared up in his missing right hand. 

Brienne reached past him and stopped the video. It was a drone shot, high enough away few details could be made out. “Are you all right?” she asked him. Her voice was as delicate as a feather. 

“Just...pain,” he said, rubbing the seam where his prosthetic base met his arm. The nerve pain now was sharp and electric, but manageable; the only thing he remembered from when his car had started rolling to waking up in the hospital was a burning in his wrist, so jagged and agonizing Jaime was fairly sure he'd screamed. “It's fine.” He swallowed. “Let's finish it.”

“There's not much left, I imagine,” Brienne said, hitting play again. 

The drone hovered over the crash site and then the image flashed to Brienne in the gantry, her hands clutching the headphones to her ears, her face bloodless and stark with terror. For the first time watching the video, Jaime looked away. 

“I didn't even know they were filming me,” Brienne murmured. She was still watching herself, but Jaime couldn't do it. He looked at her here, instead, her face bright with freckles that had been burnished by their summer outdoors, her thin hair slipping free like always from where she wanted it tucked behind her ear. She glanced at him and smiled, her chin trembling a little, before stopping the video and closing it. 

“Well,” she said. “That sucked.”

Unexpectedly, Jaime laughed. “It did.” He pressed his nose against her cheek and took a breath before pulling back to search her face. “You hadn't watched it either.”

“No,” she confirmed. “I couldn't imagine seeing that again. Once was bad enough.” She rubbed her hand over his back, smoothing out the tense knots of his muscles. “How are you?”

Jaime's right arm had stopped hurting, and his chest felt like all his organs were slowly unwinding, stretching out inside of him instead of where they'd been clenched into a tight ball. 

“I'm... not as bad as I thought I'd be.” And he wasn't. He didn't want to watch the crash again, but he was surprised to discover that thinking about it didn't fill him with the same heavy dread as it had even a few minutes ago. The specter of what had occurred was still a visceral shadow; many of the decisions he'd made since then had pivoted around that moment, and he'd had to adapt so much of the easy physicality of his life to this new reality. But as tangible as the trauma of the crash still was, it couldn't compete with what he could reach out and grasp now: the astonishing woman who held his heart, the friends that populated spaces that had once been empty, work that he loved and was fucking great at. Samwell had reassured Jaime that it was natural that some part of him might always mourn what he'd lost; but the mourning wouldn't be all, or even most, of what remained. That in fact the magnitude of what he'd gained since would cast its own light, driving the shadows back. 

“I'm happy to hear that,” Brienne said. As she leaned in to give him a hug, her breathing stuttered, a staccato failure to act like nothing was wrong. 

“Hey,” Jaime said, pulling back to look into her eyes. They were bright with unshed tears. “What is it?”

She touched her forehead to his. “I thought watching that would be easier, since I knew going in you didn't die, but I-- It was--” Brienne's body was rigid, her head pressed hard to his. 

“I'm still here,” he softly reassured them both. A different flip of the Stranger's coin and that could have just as easily not been true. Jaime took her hand and brought it to his chest, laid it over his heart. “Can you feel that?” Brienne nodded a little, their noses touching. “I'm right here.” 

“I didn't want to make this about me.” 

“It's about us.” He curled his fingers around her jaw and separated enough he could kiss her, feel her breath with his own. Jaime nuzzled into her, their cheeks and chins and lips brushing against each other. “Thank you. For caring so much.” 

Her hand curled into his chest, like she was trying to hold his heartbeat in her palm. “You don't have to thank me for loving you,” she whispered. “I choose it – you – willingly. Even with everything, I'd choose you every time.” 

Jaime nodded, rubbed his thumb over her cheek, nodded again. Brienne had never been as openly demonstrative as he had, but when she was, it was always like she'd saved up a whole race's worth of ERS to deploy in a single, exhilarating leap. 

Brienne kissed him again and then pulled back out of his grip, her hand dropping to his knee, squeezing it warmly. “What should we do now?” 

“We have a race to prepare for,” he told her, “so we prepare.” 

Brienne nodded, chewing on her lip with her teeth. “We can take a break, if you need one.”

“I'm fine. Although this time,” Jaime slipped his arm around Brienne and tugged her close, “I really do want you to sit in my lap.” Her laugh was loud, drowning out the last fading screech of metal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you like to see real F1 drivers in an axe-throwing contest for PR purposes? I know you do. [Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen](https://youtu.be/1rM-aNQ_mSE) did it for Red Bull Racing. :D


	45. September (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harrenhal, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me open with a link to [this manipulation by naomignome of a racing magazine cover about Jaime!](https://naomignome.tumblr.com/post/618527958993403904/i-love-ajoblotofjunk-s-fic-heart-full-of) I have stared at this MANY TIMES since she posted it, so I hope you enjoy it, too. I wish this was a real magazine I could buy and read cover-to-cover. hee. 
> 
> Second: time to re-up my profuse thanks to BrynnMck, who helped make this chapter its best self. Any remaining flaws are _entirely_ my doing. I cannot stress enough how much better this fic is because of her care and attention. Some of the parts y'all have commented on the most are due to her pointing out they needed to be there, I'm indebted to her.

**Lannister Corp: 129 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 120 pts**

The days leading up to the Harrenhal Grand Prix passed quickly. Brienne and Jaime left Tarth Wednesday night to give themselves an extra day to each have a face-to-face appointment with Dr. Tarly on Thursday. It turned out to be a good call when the media swarmed the garage on Friday in the same overwhelming numbers and overbearing enthusiasm as they had in the early part of the season. Brienne hadn't missed feeling like they were being pelted by a hailstorm of noise and light, and Jaime had been an unbending straight line beside her as he answered questions about being back at the track where he'd almost lost – and that had ultimately changed – his life. 

It was a relief to retreat from the crush and get back to the work, and in return the work drained the tension and worry from both of them. The first time Brienne drove out of the pit lane and passed the spot where Jaime had crashed against the track wall, her hands were so tight on the steering wheel that her fingers cramped up. But with each consecutive lap, her hold eased, and she was able to focus on the new configuration tests instead of wondering which of the hundreds of marks and nicks on the low concrete barrier belonged to him. Saturday, Brienne pressed the corners of the track hard, feeling them out and teasing the most she could out of the tires without taking too much before the race, and qualified at a P-4 start on the grid. 

The track at Harrenhal was as naturally dark and foreboding as ever when they arrived on Sunday for the race, though it felt different as she walked it, the dull morning sunlight fighting through the high clouds. She brushed her fingers along the wall where Jaime had crashed, and instead of terror she felt determination surge through her. The track had been hovering over them for a week – for a year, in some ways – and Brienne's blood pumped with eager anticipation. They'd prepared for this race in every possible way. It wouldn't break her, she would break it. 

Later, as she wove back-and-forth during the formation lap before race start, Jaime asked, “Are you ready for this?” 

“Completely,” she answered without hesitation. 

“You've got this, Wrench,” he said as she pulled up to the P-4 starting line. 

“I know.” She stretched out her fingers before curling them back around the steering wheel, her attention focused on the black board at the head of the line of cars. The lights turned on, one after the other, unblinking red eyes looking down on them all. Brienne took one complete breath before they shut again, and the race was on. 

Brienne accelerated hard, the familiar force rocketing her back into her seat. After much discussion, Jaime had convinced her to aim for the outside lane down the opening straight, and she did, finding herself briefly alone in P-2 when Jon Snow and Lancel jockeyed for the middle, slowing each other down to avoid a collision. It was a battle that Lancel won, pulling past her back into P-2 and leaving her and Jon wheel-to-wheel. Robb was in P-1 and making the most of it, but she pushed her car hard around the first curve to keep just ahead of Jon, his tires inches from hers, her whole body shaking as she held the car to a tight line, not giving him a scrap of the track she currently owned. 

As they pulled out of the long, u-shaped turn four, they hurtled towards the abrupt right of turn five. Brienne didn't let up on the accelerator until it was almost dangerously late, braking so hard she felt like her stomach tried to escape through her belly button, but it was enough to put her ahead of Jon, who was always more cautious in his braking. Brienne used her strength and willpower to hold the car on the track through the tight turn, did it again in turn six, and surged ahead of Jon to a comfortable P-3. 

“Risky, but good job,” Jaime said over the headset. 

“I told you I've got this,” she said. The red of Lancel's car ahead glared as balefully in the sun as the red starting lights, but he was driving with as much fierce determination as she was, and when he boxed, Jaime called her in at the same time. 

The crew was a flurry of black tires and blue jumpsuits and Brienne was in and out so quickly she didn't even have time to find Jaime in the gantry. Returning to the track, Lancel was still ahead of her, but Jon was still behind. 

With ten laps left to go, Jaime's voice crackled over the headset. “Jon's going to try one more pass,” he warned her. “He's been prepping for it, and his tires are slightly newer.”

This far upfield, Brienne was vividly aware of her current position, who was in front of her, and what she stood to lose if she let Jon pass. The confidence that had been carrying her through wavered, like tires losing air.

“What do I do?”

“What you do best, Wrench: you drive.” 

She checked her mirrors and saw Jon's front wing creeping nearer. There were one, maybe two car-lengths between them, and far too many laps to go. 

“What if he uses his DRS?”

“Then you let him and gain position back on the corners. This track isn't good for him. I guarantee you can get him in corners eighteen and nineteen, even if it's the last lap.”

Brienne breathed as her car zipped through the tunnel, then again past the spot where Jaime had crashed. 

With seven laps to go, Jon passed her on the long straight of the opening grid and she bit down a curse and focused. 

“He's been too wide coming out of turn eleven all afternoon,” Jaime told her. “Wait for that, take the inside, and you'll gain some ground.”

She did, her right-hand wheels bouncing over the kerb when she cut it too close. But it was enough to slice across Jon's much larger apex, and she pulled ahead back into P-3. 

“Excellent,” Jaime said, and she could hear his smile. 

As she sped through the gentle curves of 12 and 13, Jaime said, “Heads-up: Daario is pulling out of the pit lane ahead,” just as the other man's car came hurtling out. She'd lapped him already but he must not have seen her, because he went wide in preparation for the next turn – the one where Jaime had crashed last season – his wheels slicing near and Brienne thought of Jaime and Ramsay, of her own first race of the season when she'd overcorrected, and she faltered as she pictured first her car and then, with an unexpectedly visceral punch, Jaime's as it had been on the screen: a mass of carbon fibre and metal against the wall that was now immediately in front of her. His soft body had been stuck somewhere inside and she'd thought for a too long moment he was dead. Her foot fell off the accelerator and Jon nudged past, taking advantage of her hesitation. She let him go, falling back to P-4. 

“Don't think about it.” Jaime's voice was quiet even with her earpieces pressed snug into her ears. Brienne almost asked how he knew, but of course he would. There were some physical places in the world you carried in your bones, and the wall where he had crashed was one for both of them. “Just focus on now. Six more laps and you only need to overtake him by the last one.” 

“Jaime--”

“Six more laps,” he repeated firmly. “You can do this.” 

They roared around the track, passing the wall again and again and again, Jon just ahead of her, not giving her a single opportunity to cut around. He was using her hard braking strategy against her, forcing her to wear her tires to their limits. The Direwolf car was faster than Evenstar's, and even with DRS it was too hard to pass him on the straights, though she got close. They pulled out of turn nineteen and down the straight to start the last lap of the race. 

“I can't catch him,” Brienne said as they jockeyed for the inside corner in turn one. 

“You don't have to catch him, you just have to be more patient. You're good at that.” 

“How?” 

“Slow down.” 

Brienne blinked uncertainly. “Sorry, repeat that?”

“Slow down. His tires are almost gone, too, and he doesn't want to drive this hard, either. Jon prefers a steadier approach; it's what makes him a good number two. But it also makes him bad at winning.” Brienne winced. When these recordings went public, Jon wasn't going to appreciate that. “Convince him your tires are shot and you're just trying to hold onto P-4. He'll buy it.” 

“And then what?” she asked, downshifting to take corner nine. 

“Then you shock the hell out of him on that short straight coming out of turn seventeen.”

Seventeen was nearly at the end of the lap. If she couldn't make it work, the race would be over seconds later. 

_Then I better make it work_, she told herself, and slowed down on the long, sloping straight out turn eleven. Jon pulled even further ahead and Brienne's heart sank, her fingers itching to shift up and go after him, but she'd tried that for the last five laps and it hadn't worked once. 

As they approached turn 14, Jon noticeably slowed, and he did it much earlier than he had been for a while. Jaime's strategy was working. She slowed with Jon, though not as soon or as much, and coming out of turn fifteen, she was half a car-length closer. Her tires were slick and untrustworthy under her, but they were all she had and there was only half a lap to go; she didn't have a choice. 

They roared into turn sixteen, Jon braking earlier and longer again, Brienne moving even closer, and then again going into turn seventeen. By the time they pulled out of that turn for the last significant straight of the race, Brienne was within striking distance. When Jon began his braking for turn eighteen, Brienne accelerated and then, holding onto the steering wheel with every ounce of strength she had, she laid the full weight of her body on the brakes, felt the g-forces slam into her, trying to push her head down into her lap, but she fought the unwieldy tires and shuddering car and gravity itself, and pulled wheel-to-wheel with Jon on the brief straight before the final turn of the race. 

Though her arms and her neck and her eyeballs were aching, she somehow did it again, and this time, as they pulled out of the last turn, her car overtook Jon's. The checkered flag waved in a fluttering infinite eight pattern ahead as she upshifted and prayed that the tires and the engine and her own body would all hold on. 

She sailed under the flag at P-3, a car length ahead. 

As soon as her back wheels crossed the line, Jaime was yelling and laughing in her ear, an ocean of joyous noise that had no form but couldn't be clearer: Brienne had earned her first podium. 

Ahead, she saw her crew hanging off of the pit wall, waving their arms and legs and shirts at her as she drove by for her cool-down lap, and she swerved near them to wave. For a moment she worried Pod was going to fall out onto the track, he was so excited, but she saw Bronn grab him and yank him back. 

“Holy fuck!” Jaime shouted, his delirious noises coalescing into actual words. “Holy fuck, Brienne! You did it! I knew you could do it!” 

She pressed one trembling hand to the side of her car. “Good work, girl,” she said quietly. “We did it.” Then, again, but louder and so Jaime could her: “_We did it!_”

“Fuck yes you did,” Jaime crowed. “We'll meet you at the parc fermé.”

She parked this time in a part she'd never been in before, following the track judge's hand signals until she saw the tall black sign with a white number 3 on it. He pointed at her and then at the sign, and she pulled in front of it and stopped her car. Even with the engines off, the noise of the cheering crowds was just as deafening when she pulled her helmet off of her head. 

Her team were losing their minds behind the barrier, shoving each other and surging so aggressively against it that they nearly tipped the whole thing over. Brienne hurried to them and they opened their arms and dragged her in, enveloping her in their utter mayhem: patting her back, squeezing her hands and elbows and shoulders. Addam kissed her on one cheek and Podrick kissed her on the other. Arya gripped her around the waist and Willem was hollering in one loud, long delighted yodel of joy. She was buffeted about on their waves of delirium and celebration and Brienne was happy to throw herself in.

And then like magic they all let her go at once, and Jaime pushed through, a sunbeam cutting across the water, so bright and beautiful in his fierce happiness she couldn't breathe. 

“Not bad, Wrench,” he said, grinning like he'd been the one driving. 

Brienne grabbed his shirt and pulled him near, kissing him hard and stealing his smile for herself. When she pushed him back again, his lips were red and his eyes were dark and it was the happiest moment of her life. 

“Not to break up whatever weird mind sex is happening here,” Addam said, laughing, and she and Jaime both blinked and looked over at him. “But it's time for weigh-in and you probably don't want this all over the internet anyway.” He pointed at the cameras that were all pointed back at her, even though Robb and Lancel had placed higher. 

She flushed and Jaime's smile was as wide and welcoming as the horizon, but he pointed her to the winner's cooldown room. “Come with me,” she said, grabbing his prosthetic hand, and he smiled softly at her. 

“Not this time. This is all yours.” 

Brienne kissed him again and reluctantly left him there, following the officials to where they pointed. Robb and Lancel were already in the room; Lancel was getting weighed and Robb was rubbing a towel over his sweaty head. 

“Brienne!” he greeted her when she stepped in, smiling broadly. “Congratulations!” 

There were cameras everywhere, capturing every last second of their activities: the post-race weigh-in, Lancel's stony silence, Robb patting her on the back jovially and talking to her about the race, and Brienne's shaking hand as she picked up the cap labeled '3rd' and put it on her head. 

One of the long screens along the wall kept rotating through their names and positions: 1st place – Robb Stark, 2nd place – Lancel Lannister, 3rd place – Brienne Tarth. Her eyes kept darting back to that, memorizing the way her name looked on the screen. 

The officials called their names and announced it was time for the podium, and Brienne followed Robb and Lancel down a different hall and up two flights of stairs, her nerves pulling more taut with each step upward. When the IAF official opened the door to the podium, the crowd noise buffeted her back a step and she halted, suddenly terrified. 

Lancel went out first and Robb glanced back at Brienne. “They're there to cheer for you,” he reassured her. “Just wave and give them a smile and take the trophy when they hand it to you.” 

“I don't know how to do the champagne.” 

He hesitated in the doorway, frowning. “You mean... spray it?” Brienne nodded. It felt so silly, but it was the signature moment of the podium, when each driver took their enormous bottle of champagne and sprayed it on everyone they could reach, including each other and themselves. Kids did it with sparkling cider in the lower circuits. She'd never even practiced it before. 

“I don't know what to do,” she worried, and Robb threw his head back with laughter. 

“Just shake and spray. You'll do fine.” He tugged her by the elbow and then gently shoved her out the door ahead of him and there was a cacophonous roar, the loudest from the crowd of blue Evenstar Racing crew gathered on the side she would stand in third place. Bronn was shouting something she couldn't understand through his cupped hands, and Podrick was banging what looked like a wrench and a piece of scrap metal together in a clanging drumbeat. Arya was – Brienne blinked and burst into laughter. Sandor had let her sit on his shoulders, and she was waving around an oil-streaked towel while Sandor grinned ferociously up at Brienne, his scarred face split open in sheer delight. They were all there, every last one of them, and they were all shining up at her. She beamed back down at them in return, wishing they could all be up on the podium, too. Jaime stood at the front, watching her and smiling with such pride she felt it in her heart, even from up here. 

The ceremony, washed in sunlight and swathed in the cheering of her team, passed in a dream-like blur. Dacey and Addam stood near the back of the crowd with their arms around each other and waved wildly at her with their free ones while Petyr Baelish gave a short speech about Brienne being the first woman to ever earn a podium finish. Brienne saw Meera at the edges of the Direwolf crew giving her two thumbs up when a trophy was thrust into Brienne's hands by some Harrenhal dignitary Brienne didn't know. Then Brienne had to set the trophy down to hold and shake the champagne bottle as hard as she could. Robb cracked his first, soaking Brienne while she tried frantically to spray him back, before sending it in a sticky-sweet rain down on her crew and her car parked underneath the podium with Robb's and Lancel's. 

She tucked the bottle under one arm and the trophy under another, and the ceremony was over. The trio followed the officials back to a clean-up room. 

Brienne looked at her dripping wet jumpsuit and grimaced. “Is there a shower nearby?”

“Nope. We get to sit in our sweaty champagne juices for the press conference,” Robb said cheerfully. 

“Great,” she muttered. Her skin was going tacky already, but she used the provided wet washcloth to wipe off her face and smooth back her hair, and she exchanged her cap for the Evenstar Racing one someone had thrown onto the table while they were out on the podium. 

One of the many IAF assistants hovering around led them back to the interview room for the mandatory post-race press conference. With her hair plastered in an awkwardly drying mess to her head, Brienne sat on Robb's left and Lancel sat on his right. She folded her hands on top of each other in front of her and stared nervously out at the huge crowd of journalists and cameras. 

“Brienne,” Melisandre started at Petyr's signal. “How are you feeling right now?”

“I'm in shock,” she admitted, and there was a round of low chuckling from the crowd. 

“What do you think this means for the sport?”

“That women can drive just as well as men, like we've been telling you.” That got louder laughs, but from less of the assembled crowd. 

Bonifer Hasty addressed Robb and Lancel. “How does it feel to have a woman up there with you?” 

“The same as it does to have a man: respect for their skill, but glad I was still faster,” Robb said with a disarming smile. Lancel just sat quietly, staring down at his microphone. 

“Lancel,” one of the other reporters asked, “how have you managed to make such huge strides in the last few races?”

“Just motivated, I guess,” he mumbled. 

Peck was called on next. “Brienne, what does it mean to get your first podium finish at the track where Jaime's career ended last year?” 

“It means...” Brienne shook her head and rubbed her ring. “Everything.” 

There was a soft murmur in the crowd and a woman Brienne didn't recognize spoke up. “What would you say to girls who saw your race today and might be watching now?”

She never quite knew how to answer these questions, mostly because they meant so much to her to get right. All she could do was be honest. “I guess I'd say that it isn't easy, being a woman in a sport that doesn't welcome women.” There was some deep-voiced grumbling in the crowd, though Melisandre gave her a small, encouraging nod. “But I'm lucky to be doing something I love, and it's okay to just enjoy that sometimes. Today all I want to think about was what it felt like to be up there, knowing I earned it. There will be more fighting tomorrow, and I'm sure at least one of you will write an article this week talking about how a male driver would have had P-2 or certain that I can't do it again, that this was just luck. I don't mind proving myself. I've been doing it all my life, and so will any girls who follow me into F1, at least for a while. But I hope they remember to celebrate, too. That's my advice.” 

The woman nodded, smiling gratefully, and the questions moved on to the race itself. 

By the time the press conference finished and the drivers were led back out to the parc fermé, all of the adrenaline had ebbed away, and she smelled like stale alcohol and sweat and felt like she could sleep for a week, until she saw Jaime waiting for her. The rest of the crew had gone back to the garage, as had her car, but Jaime was waiting, leaning against the wall, his arms folded casually over his chest. The sunset was low enough on the horizon behind him to make it look like he was the sun, golden beams radiating from his skin as he straightened. His light and heat reached out to her even from a distance and her exhaustion burned away, her body thrumming to the call of his. 

Brienne waved off Robb's last congratulations without really hearing them and hurried to Jaime. They hugged tightly, and he rubbed his hand up her back to cup her neck. 

The cameras were still trained on them when he pressed his nose against her ear. “I hope you're ready to celebrate. I want to lick you clean,” he murmured too soft for anyone else to hear. She shivered against him. 

“I need a shower.” 

“That can be arranged immediately after. Come on,” he pulled away, his lips curling with promise. “There's a ride waiting for us already, and the crew knows we won't be back to the garage tonight. I made some assumptions.” 

“I trust you,” she said, matching his smile. 

Just outside of the paddocks, there was a luxurious silver sedan waiting for them, a well-dressed driver waiting at the door. 

“Where on earth did you get this?” she asked Jaime, who waved the question off. 

“Don't worry about it,” Jaime said. “I called in a long-overdue favor.” 

Inside was all posh elegance: wide, soft leather seats that had plenty of room even for her; pocket-sized bottles of alcohol in what looked like a small mini-fridge; darkly-tinted passenger-side windows; and dim, romantic lighting that turned on once the door was closed, cocooning them in such casual richness Brienne could only stare. The driver got in the front seat and started the car without a word. The partition between the front and back seats went completely opaque. 

“Fancy,” Brienne said, lifting an eyebrow. “I suppose this is more what you're used to.” 

“It is, but it's much better with you here.” 

She touched his cheek softly, but when she leaned forward to kiss him, she stuck to the seat and winced when it squeaked with her shifting. 

“Here,” Jaime said, unsnapping the top of her driving suit and unzipping it slowly, his hand brushing down between her breasts as he did. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, glancing at the partition. 

“Helping you get comfortable,” Jaime whispered in her ear, his fingers sneaking under the hem of her Nomex undershirt to brush her stomach. 

“In the car?” she breathed, even as his fingers skimmed higher. 

“I can stop if you want.” The partition was still impossible to see through and though she probably should ask him to stop, she could wait a minute to see where he was going with this.

“How comfortable?” she asked, biting her lip, and he huffed a quiet laugh in her ear, a heated rush of air that made the hairs all along her body stand up. 

“Pretty comfortable.” His fingers curved around her ribs, and up to the elastic of her sports bra. Desire fluttered against her skin from the inside, following the path of his hand. Jaime kissed the dip between her jaw and her neck, then pressed the flat of his tongue against her skin. “You taste like champagne.” 

She felt like she'd drunk most of it with how light she felt, need bubbling to the surface and fizzing at his touch. Brienne tilted her head to give Jaime better access, and he took it with greedy, sucking kisses along her neck. His hand cupped her breast through her bra, his thumb sweeping across her taut nipple and sending more shocking spirals through her.

There were people walking the streets outside and their chauffeur in the front seat, and normally she'd ask Jaime to wait, but her blood was surging, full and alive with all she'd accomplished and Jaime's strength firm against her own. She'd earned her first podium ever at the track that had almost taken Jaime from her, and when his fingers drifted back down her stomach, she let her legs fall open in invitation. He inhaled sharply, the pads of his fingers stilling, pressed into her abdomen. 

“Why did you stop?” she asked low, and he groaned, tugging at her earlobe with his teeth. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“_Yes._”

His hand crept under the band of her pants and underwear. “I don't usually finger my fiancée in public,” he murmured, and she bit back a moan. “But watching you today, the way you handled the track, seeing you up on that podium – I don't want to wait.”

Jaime's hand curled against the hairs at her center, covering her with his heated palm, his fingertips teasing at her folds. Their cocoon felt safe enough from prying eyes that if she could keep silent-- 

Jaime slipped his finger between her lower lips to press against her clit and she cried out, unable to catch the sound in her throat, tensing in the seat. His finger curved in, resting at her entrance and her hips shifted up towards it. “Do you think you'll taste like champagne here, too?” he whispered in her ear. 

They should stop before she entirely lost control of herself; she felt the words on her tongue, but instead of spitting them out she swallowed them down and wrapped her hand around Jaime's bicep, tugging him nearer. 

“Why don't you find out?” she asked, and he moaned and sunk his finger in her already slick cunt. 

Brienne was still mostly in her driver suit, her shirt pulled up and Jaime's arm heavy along her stomach. Her body clenched and moved, trying to give him more room, but when she opened her legs wider it just pulled the fabric more tightly, trapping his wrist. 

“Wait, let me--” Jaime pulled his finger out of her and she let a breathy, complaining whine escape, drawing a sharp grin from him. “Impatient, Wrench?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good. So am I.” He helped her pull her arms quickly out of her suit, and then together they shoved it down to her knees, leaving her in just her Nomex underneath. It was stretchier, and would be enough, she thought, until he tugged that down, too, and she was in her underwear with the rest bunched up at her ankles. “Gods,” he growled, pulling aside the fabric to slide two fingers in without preamble. Brienne cried out and clenched around him. Silence was far too much to ask for now. “I'd fuck you right here if I could.” 

She thought of pushing him back into the seat, setting his cock free and climbing into his lap. His fingers were stroking in and out of her while he left open-mouthed kisses along what he could reach of her neck. “How long do we have to the hotel?” she panted and the noise Jaime made in his chest was a rumbling collision of laughter and desire. 

“Not long enough.” He braced himself against the seat with his prosthetic and kissed her hungrily until she was wedged back between the window and the leather and he was nearly in her lap, his fingers plunging relentlessly into her. The ride was so smooth Brienne could barely tell they were still moving, didn't care whether they were except that she wanted him to never stop, every previously exhausted muscle in her body renewed and desperate for more. She felt like a champagne bottle, Jaime shaking her thoroughly with his long, powerful fingers, her body trembling on the edge waiting for him to crack her open. He added a third finger and took her nipple in the wet heat of his mouth and Brienne arched up towards him, scrabbling for purchase with her feet trapped in her clothes. One hand still grasped his upper arm and the muscle under her palm was like steel. 

“Jaime, _please_,” she begged. He snuck his leg under hers and lifted her thighs as far apart as they would go with his knee and Brienne keened loudly, not caring whether anyone could hear her. Jaime swiped his thumb over her clit and released the pressure he'd so expertly built and she shuddered and arched up out of the seat as much as she could, trapped by his hand still pressing down and inside of her, his chest hard against her side. Brienne cried out until he'd emptied every last drop of her need and let her trembling body sink back down into her seat. 

Jaime petted her center through her aftershocks, murmuring soothingly in her ear. “You're so strong” and “you're so good” and “I love you, _fuck_, I love you,” until she thought she might come again just from the sound of his voice against her skin, wrapping her up in the low, rough tones. 

Brienne blinked and looked around, the hazy lighting making him golden and soft, and she released his arm to tenderly press her palm to his cheek. “Are we there yet?” she asked. 

Jaime laughed gently, turning his head to kiss the inside of her palm.

“Not yet, but soon.”

“Good,” she said, reaching down and squeezing his rigid cock through his pants. He hissed and grabbed her hand. His fingers were wet on her wrist. 

“I can wait for the hotel. Consider this the formation lap,” Jaime said. 

His eyes were mostly pupil, dark and hungry, but he helped her pull her pants back up and her suit half-on, kissing the inside of her thighs as he did, swiping his tongue once through the lips of her cunt and making her squeak. 

“Not champagne,” he murmured, grinning up at her. “Better.”

Brienne wrapped her hands around his head and pulled him near to kiss him soft and then hard, shallow gasps and the deep searching of tongues. “I can't believe we didn't even put our seatbelts on,” she chided when they broke apart to breathe, and Jaime's laugh was a bell, pealing all around the cabin. 

“Then let's buckle up and we can pretend we were upstanding citizens the entire ride.” 

Brienne looked him over and doubted anyone would believe that. His shaggy hair was an obvious mess, not a styled one, his shirt was tugged too far down one shoulder, his lips were reddened and wet, and his erection was noticeable. She was certain she didn't look much better with her suit half-off and her face still flushed red. 

“You're a very bad influence,” she said sternly, smoothing back her hair. 

“I am,” he agreed cheerfully. Jaime took her left hand and kissed the knuckle next to her ring. She wore it all the time now; it was not as strange as she'd expected to go from no jewelry at all to the steady weight of the necklace against her chest and the band on her finger. Instead, they comforted her. Brienne would find herself rubbing her thumb against the underside of her ring whenever she was nervous or annoyed, like a soothing talisman. 

The car did stop, the quiet engine shutting off entirely, and Jaime peered out the darkened window. “We're here,” he said. “Now the real race begins.” He gave her a salacious grin.

* * *

As soon as the door to their hotel room started to close behind them, Jaime was kissing Brienne again, using his prosthetic to hold her near while his other hand pulled and yanked at her suit and pants, rubbing over the firm muscles of her ass as he walked her back to the bed. 

When he'd texted Tyrion to get the car – 'something a Lannister would be proud of' had been his only specification – he hadn't been sure what to expect, and his brother had worked a miracle to get what he had. Jaime hadn't intended on plundering Brienne in the car, but when the opportunity had presented itself, it was all he could think about. _She_ was all he could think about, from the moment she'd gotten the checkered flag to when she'd finished with the press conference and returned to him. Jaime had forgotten what a mental effort all the post-race bullshit took, and he'd tried to dampen his own wants when he saw how slumped and tired she was. But as soon as their eyes met, her tall, powerful body had lifted and filled with the sunlight, a conquering knight returning in victory from war, Harrenhal lying beaten at her feet. If they hadn't been surrounded by cameras, he wasn't sure what he would have done. 

His erection had started then, at least, and it was still going strong now as he pushed her gently down onto the bed. 

“Take your clothes off,” he told her, and he could hear how hoarse his own voice was, but, fuck, what could anyone expect when Brienne was still pink and dark-eyed from the first orgasm he'd given her. 

He took off his shoes and socks and then started to deal with his prosthetic and the base, going still when Brienne stood, completely naked and glowing, and helped him, setting everything down on the nearest chair. She pulled off the protective covering over the skin and then kissed his stump with her thick, gentle lips and he jolted. 

Brienne glanced at him from under her pale eyelashes, checking in, and Jaime nodded. She knew it wasn't that it hurt when she touched his scars, but rather that the sensation was sometimes simply too much, all his nerves heightened and exposed. They felt especially uncovered here in the city where he'd lost his hand. Her tongue probed the valleys and curves of his scarred arm and Jaime shut his eyes, his head falling back as the feeling scattered through him, jumping nerve to nerve through his body until every part of him was tingling. 

“Wait,” he whispered. Brienne stopped immediately, her eyes as deep blue and heated as the sky before a summer storm. “Lie down.”

“You're still dressed,” she pointed out. “Take care of that, first.” She was playful and bold, confident in not just his love for her, but in herself. This was what he had imagined when she'd stood on the podium holding her trophy over her head and shouting joyfully back at the crew, a woman who had come fully into her own and was relishing it. 

“We can fix that.” He grinned quickly and pulled his shirt off so fast it briefly burned his arm. Brienne was working at his belt and he let her, keeping his hips still even when she unzipped him and her hand brushed against his hard cock. She pulled his pants down his hips and they fell to the floor at his feet. “Better?” he asked. 

She made a thoughtful, humming noise and palmed him through his underwear and he couldn't control the jut of his hips into her hand, especially when she squeezed him with her big, warm fingers. “You do look sexy in just these boxer-briefs,” she said, all light and teasing, striking his heart so deep he wrapped his hand into her hair and pulled her close to kiss her passionately. 

“Bed,” he growled into her mouth and she nodded, yanking him with her by the elastic of his underwear. He stepped out of his pants and followed her down onto the mattress, kissing her all over her face, her jawline, her neck. 

Brienne stretched out on top of the sheets and Jaime watched every rippling muscle, the pale, freckled skin of her stomach going tight, the way her long legs seemed to impossibly expand. Jaime wished he could put his mouth on all of her at once, but he started with the dip just above her collarbone and licked a stripe across her chest, tasting alcohol and salt. 

He'd wanted to know the flavors of her for so long, had had her so briefly last season. Last year in Harrenhal, when they'd argued in his driver's room before the crash, he'd been so sure she was lost to him for good. Jaime paused to breathe her in now – gas and champagne and the slightly sour musk of her sweat. This moment seemed so fragile when he considered all that had been against them. He took a slow breath and thanked every fate, god, and other deity in existence that they were here in Harrenhal together and triumphant. 

“I wish you knew what it was like for me to see you up there today,” he mumbled into her skin, pausing to suck and swirl his tongue around each breast. “To watch everyone finally see how fucking incredible you are.” Jaime pressed hot, wet kisses down between her breasts to her navel, licking a circle around the dip there. 

“I do know,” she said and he glanced back up at her. Brienne placed a pillow under her head and met his gaze. “That's how I felt watching you win last season.” She ran her fingers through his hair and he arched his head into the massage of her hand. “I didn't understand how no one could see you like I did.” 

“You were the only one who could.”

“Not anymore,” she said, tugging lightly at his hair. Jaime kissed the crevice where her thigh met her body and she trembled. 

“No, not anymore. But still the best.” He kissed along the line where her pubic hair started, grinning against her leg when she pushed up towards his mouth. “I'm not done complimenting you,” he told her, and felt a thrill when he looked up to see her glaring down at him. “Be still or I'll make you be still.”

She lifted her hips up again, her eyes bright and challenging, and he crawled up onto his knees to press his stump and his hand down against her hipbones, pushing her back into the bed. Brienne's chin rose, her lips thinned into a reckless smile, and what blood he had left that wasn't already down there swelled his cock harder. 

“I'd like to see you try, Lannister,” she said, throaty and deep, and his chest heaved with want. 

“If you insist,” he purred. He sank back down between her thighs and curved his arms under them, settling her legs over his shoulders while she kept her eyes on him, watching him intently. He peered across the length of her torso and smiled. “You drove like a world champion today,” he said. 

“I had help,” she replied through the haze of lust, just before he sucked her clit between his lips. 

She groaned and threw her head back, her pelvis trying to lift against his forearms holding her down. When he moved his mouth away she tried to move after him, but he was strong enough to hold her. 

Jaime kissed the inside of one long, flushed thigh, and then the other. “You were the one with your hands on the wheel.”

“The crew had a record pit time,” she said, and he tilted his head to stare at her from between the towering mountain of her thighs. Her desire was a fire burning in the deep pools of her eyes, her hair messy and curling all around her head, her plump lips open and reddened.

“It was you who pulled ahead of Jon at the end.”

“That was your strategy,” she insisted.

“Brienne, it's your first podium finish ever, take the damn compliment,” Jaime growled impatiently, nipping at her tender skin. 

She made a needy little noise in her throat. “It wasn't just me. You're the one who told me that. I can't share the blame when I fail and then take all the glory when I win.” 

Jaime glared at her this time. She was so godsdamned stubborn in her goodness, in a way that drove him wild. “I'm going to keep telling you positive things about your race today,” he said firmly. “And instead of deflecting after each one, you're going to tell me, 'thank you, Jaime,' and then I'm going to eat you out.” 

The sound she made was desperate and ragged and he was certain he was going to come without her touching him even once. It would be worth it, though. 

He hovered near her cunt, saw the hairs stir with his breath, and she made a soft mewl of arousal and tried to press against his mouth but he tsk'd and pulled away. “Ah-ah-ah. You haven't thanked me for the last ones,” he said. 

“Fuck you,” she breathed, but there was no real anger there. He knew her well enough by now to see it was only need in the blood pumping hot under her tender skin. There was so much of her, and he wanted all of it all the time. Thank the gods she'd agreed to be his wife; he'd need a lifetime to get his fill. 

“Not yet,” he said. “Try again.” 

“Jaime,” she pleaded and he shook his head, making sure his hair brushed against the tender skin of her knees. She dug her heels into his shoulders. 

“You're missing part of it still.”

“Annoying,” she grumbled. 

“Stubborn.”

He kissed all around her cunt, moving his tongue in the seam of her leg while she shivered and struggled to push herself against his face, but his position was too advantageous and she never quite caught him. 

“Thank you,” she finally gasped, almost begging. He immediately thrust his tongue into her center and she shouted in relief. 

Jaime licked long stripes from her perineum to her clit and when she was panting, her hands fisted in the sheets, he stopped. 

“What--”

“You looked like a goddess when you were soaked in that champagne.” 

Her hips rolled greedily against his arms and he watched her face, saw the fight in her eyes. 

Jaime kissed her gently on the inside of her knee. “We can stop this if you want,” he said, serious for a moment. He rubbed his cock against the bed, torturing himself as much as her. “It wouldn't be a hardship to move on to the next part.” 

But she only met his gaze defiantly and said, “Thank you, Jaime,” in a voice ripe with desire that bloomed hot inside him. He covered as much of her cunt with his mouth as he could, devouring her until she shook apart against his teeth and then he pulled back and watched the curve of her back lower down to the bed in a graceful slump. Her muscular thighs were sweaty under his arms, her cunt deep pink and glistening, her clit swollen. All he could think was _she's here and she's magnificent and she's mine_. 

He didn't have the capacity for many more words after that. 

“You took those curves like a demon,” he managed, and “you owned every fucking inch of that track,” and “fuck, you're so wet.” And always she urged him on: “Thank you, Jaime, thank you, _gods_, thank you” until he couldn't stand it anymore and he nearly ripped his own underwear off in his haste, thrusting into her while she quivered from another orgasm. She wrapped her legs around him and cried out so loudly he thought the whole floor would hear them and he fucked her harder still, told her he loved her, how hot she was, how much he wanted her, and thank you, Brienne, thank you, _thank you_, and then he was coming as fast and fierce as an engine redlining and all his words failed him when he pressed his forehead to her shoulder and lost control. 

Jaime collapsed on top of her when he was spent, grateful she could take his weight. Her hands rubbed over his sweaty back and hip, her fingers drawing circles on his skin. They were quiet for awhile, and he dozed a little until she moved and jostled him. 

“I need to pee,” she said when he mumbled nonsense at her. 

He slid off of her, felt her press a tender kiss between his shoulder blades before she got off the bed. Jaime dozed again, and when the bed dipped with her weight, he smelled the fresh lilac scent of the hotel shampoo. Brienne wrapped herself around him, nuzzling into his ear. Her wet hair trailed over his arm. 

“What time is it?” he asked into the pillow. 

“Dinner. Are you hungry?”

Jaime considered and then sighed. “Yeah. How did you have enough energy to take a shower?” he asked, opening an eye to look at her. Her skin was pink from the water and heat, glowing and creamy, her freckles cheerful stars all over. 

“My youth,” she said, and he squinted fiercely at her. “You don't look ferocious at all like this. You look like a confused cat.” 

“I'll pay you back for that.” 

She kissed his nose. “I look forward to it. Go take a shower and I'll order us some room service.”

Later, after he'd showered, too, and they were sitting snuggled next to each other against the headboard of the bed, an array of plates in front of them, Jaime lifted his glass of water in a toast. Brienne had insisted on no more champagne that evening. She grinned and lifted her own glass. 

“To you,” he said. “What you did today, on this track in particular, was incredible. I'm so proud of you. I knew you could do it.” 

Brienne smiled as widely as he'd ever seen her. “Thank you,” she said, before a flush crept down her neck. “You've ruined that for me now,” she muttered, and he laughed loudly for a moment. 

“As my contribution to the day, I'll take it.” He started to take a drink but she touched his wrist gently. 

“Hold on,” she said, “I have a toast, too.” 

“You're welcome for the truly excellent celebration sex.”

She gave him a brief, affectionately annoyed glare and motioned for him to raise his glass again. “To you,” she started. He opened his mouth and she shook her head, her expression serious. “No, it's my turn. You're the best race engineer I know, Jaime. The best man I know,” she added, and a warm happiness suffused him, her words expanding and surrounding him as sure and comforting as her arms. “I wouldn't want to do any of this without you. And I'm profoundly glad we could do this here at Harrenhal. I know coming back was difficult for you. I'm proud of you, too.”

They clinked their glasses together and he felt more at peace than he'd ever been, here in the city where he'd been so sure his whole life had ended. Brienne leaned her head against his, breathing in deeply.

“To us,” Jaime said, and his heart beat soft, and steady, and full of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I told jencat when I forced her to read this chapter early so I didn't post it _yesterday_: I am honestly so happy that Brienne got a podium she may as well be a real person. It has been impossible to sit on that pride for all these days. 😂
> 
> Also, in case you're curious and want to see a track map, Harrenhal has been based heavily off of Russia's Sochi Grand Prix.


	46. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jaime,” she said, their hands swinging in time as they walked with fingers entwined, “do you think I should drive next season?”
> 
> “Do you want to?” He watched her, curious. 
> 
> Brienne considered it. Whether they beat Lannister Corp in the constructor's championship or not, they'd gained enough sponsors and experience to at least continue to field a decent car that could get her the occasional podium finish. If they didn't take Tywin down, he'd be a powerful enemy bent on revenge, but he'd also have his company and his money still and that might be enough to dissuade him. And if she didn't race, could she go back to being a mechanic? Would Jaime be race engineer for someone else? Would she wake up every morning and wish she was studying track with Addam or arguing tire choices with Bronn or sharing a late dinner with Arya while they looked at testing readouts? 
> 
> “I do want to,” she said. “I want to race again.” 
> 
> Jaime grinned at her. “Then we race.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The total number of chapters listed now (51!) is the very final ultimate for real total, including epilogue, although the last story chapter might be enormously long but it really needs to all be one piece so I am the most confident I've ever been this is it and it won't change again. Part of the reason the total has gone up is because of the way the next couple of chapters go and where the emotional beats need to fall; I'd written them with the sincere intention of being able to cover everything in two chapters, but there's a lot happening and it needs space to breathe, so I'm splitting them up. This also means a couple of the upcoming chapters are on the shorter side for this story (4k-ish). 
> 
> I'm sharing all this because there's a lot of interconnected things happening in the story now that I'm writing the end, and while I would love to be able to release two chapters a week, there's a 50% chance I might have to actually go two weeks between this chapter and the next one. 
> 
> Should that happen I just wanted to reassure y'all that a) I have a very firm plan in mind for the end, which I am probably writing as you read this, because it's all my brain will let me do right now; b) this story isn't going to languish unfinished forever no matter how terrified I am of trying to write it to a fulfilling conclusion; c) once I get the last chapters settled I'll post them as soon as I can. SO. Hang in there; we're hurtling towards the end but I've got everything under control, even if it doesn't look like it on the surface. 😄

**Lannister Corp: 147 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 135 pts**

Storm's End was the home race of Stag Motors, and Renly was especially beloved by the fans there. Brienne remembered cheering him on herself the few times she and her dad had come to watch the Grand Prix. But as Sandor pulled the bus up to the track Friday for free practice, the amount of Evenstar blue in the crowd shocked her. 

“Everybody loves a winner,” Bronn said dryly as they disembarked the bus and the crowd cheered and yelled Brienne's name. 

“I only came in third,” she said, waving at the fans. 

“Tarth,” Sandor barked from his seat. She looked up at him. “Stay put until I park the bus and come back.”

“I do every time,” Brienne huffed, but he only glowered and shut the bus door on her. 

“Are you going to sign autographs?” Arya asked from the other side of Bronn. 

“Might as well, I guess. I can't go anywhere else unless I want to hear about it all day.” 

Sandor had taken on his role of bodyguard – for extra pay, at Brienne's insistence – very seriously. The first race weekend he'd done it, Brienne had gone off to a FanFest meet and greet without him and he'd been so mad she thought he'd quit right there. Since then, Brienne had done her best to not wander too far afield, although it sometimes got annoying when she was being suddenly called on by Pia to go one place and Sandor was still in another. 

“Let's do it then,” Arya said, walking towards a group of mostly older women nearby.

“Hi,” Brienne greeted them, smiling a little at the women as she approached. 

One of the women, her long gray hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, shoved a well-loved leather jacket at Brienne. “It's wonderful to meet you,” the woman said. “You can't imagine how many decades I've been waiting to see a woman driving well – and a podium finish!” She clasped her hands over her heart. “Best motorsport moment of my life, honestly.” 

“Oh,” Brienne said, blushing. “That's...thank you. Um, do you have a pen?”

“Here!” Pia came rushing up, holding out the black and silver markers she always had on her. 

Brienne held up the jacket. On the back was a picture of a slender blade and the words The Dark Sisters around it. “Who are the The Dark Sisters?”

“The all-women biker gang we're a part of.” The fan pointed at the other women around her. 

“That's _awesome_,” Arya gasped. 

“Where should I sign?” Brienne asked.

“I don't want it signed, honey, it's for you.”

Brienne blinked at the jacket and then at the woman. “This seems like something that you've had a long time, I don't want to take this from you. It wouldn't fit me, anyway.”

“You don't have to wear it, although she could,” she said, nodding at Arya who looked so pleadingly up at Brienne it reminded her of a stray dog hungry for scraps. “I didn't give it to you for that. I just wanted to know the jacket is in the hands of someone who's earned it.”

“Are you sure?” Brienne asked, folding the jacket carefully, so the blade was on top. “I really would be happy to take a picture of it or--”

“Honey, I am seventy-three years old and still ride every weekend. I think I know what I want to do with my jacket.” 

Brienne grinned and tucked the jacket under her arm. “I'm honored. And I'll make sure it's well taken care of.” She suspected she was going to see Arya in the jacket a lot at work in the future. 

They continued down the line, signing shirts and hats and race-day programs, talking to young girls and older men, each person seemingly delighted to meet her and get a selfie and a moment of Brienne's time. When Addam came to take her back to the paddock for pre-practice preparation, there was a disappointed murmur from the crowd. 

Each day that weekend started and ended with the same sort of overwhelming adoration from the fans. Now that Sandor was hovering over her shoulder, the bullies seemed uninterested in pushing their luck. But even driver's parade and weigh-in were far less fraught than they'd been. She and Drogo had formed a solid race weekend friendship, and the Stag Motors, Sunspear, and Direwolf teams were always happy to talk and treat her just like any other driver. The men who had hated her – a little less than half the field – were entrenched in that hatred, led primarily by Connington and Ramsay, but their snide remarks were fewer and softer and easier to ignore. The remaining drivers seemed uninterested in her either way, which was fine with Brienne. 

At the Storm's End drivers' parade, Hyle stood at Brienne's side as the truck trundled them around the track to wave at the fans. 

“Nice job in Harrenhal,” he told her, waving to a small pocket of Griffin fans. They were overwhelmed on either side by the black and gold of Stag Motors and the bright blue of Evenstar Racing.

“Thanks.”

“Think you can do it again?”

“Can you?” she bit back, and Hyle looked at her, before – surprisingly – laughing. 

“No wonder Ron dislikes you so much. You don't put up with any of our shit.” They stood side-by-side and waved at the crowds and Brienne realized she didn't feel tense around him any longer, waiting for him to say the meanest thing, no longer haunted by what he'd done in F2. Hyle was Hyle, but he wasn't actively malicious towards her, he just seemed to stumble into it. 

He wasn't wrong about the race, though – she didn't get P-3 again. This time, she came in P-2. 

The team was only slightly less excited than they'd been at Harrenhal, and this time Brienne made Jaime come with her to the cooldown room. She'd beaten Jon for her spot, and Robb had won again. He would almost certainly clinch the World Championship in Dragonstone in two weeks. 

The two Direwolf drivers were going through their post-race routine when she and Jaime entered the room. 

Jon came over first, shaking Brienne's hand. “Good race,” he told her, not any noticeably more dour than usual. When he turned to look at Jaime, though, he furrowed his brow and didn't offer his hand. “I'm not bad at winning,” he said. 

Jaime coughed a little and gave the other man an apologetic smile. 

“You're coming for my spot,” Robb said, shaking both their hands. “You've trained yourself a challenger, Lannister.” 

“Brienne does most of the work, I just point out where the corners are.” 

Robb laughed. “I'm sure you're very helpful. I have to admit, I wish we'd picked her up as my mechanic last year. If only to keep her from breathing down my neck next season for the championship. You will be driving again next season, won't you?” 

Brienne had barely spent time thinking about the end of _this_ season, just trying to make it race-by-race; planning for next year was unthinkable. But contracts for other drivers were already being renewed and ended, and there were plans for some changes at Nightfort and Kraken. 

“We've been trying to let Brienne focus on her rookie season before we start planning for next year. But I'm sure if the opportunity is there, she'll drive again,” Jaime said, taking up the question she was still parsing. 

“I would love to drive again next season,” Brienne agreed. “We just need to see how this one goes first.” 

“I look forward to seeing you on the track, then. In my rearview mirror, of course,” Robb said with a wink. 

On the podium again, Brienne had her champagne bottle open much more quickly, and she only got half as soaked and managed to drench Jaime, too. When they were walking back down the hallway towards the exit, he put a hand on her arm to hold her back while the others continued on, before pulling her back against his broad, soaked chest. 

“Is that why you wanted me to go with you? So you could get me all wet?” he asked huskily into her ear. 

Brienne glanced around and then, when she saw they were alone, turned in his arms and pressed him back against the wall. “It's only fair I get to taste you, too,” she murmured, licking droplets of champagne off of the line of his jaw, her tongue rasping over his trimmed beard. 

“Let's skip the press conference,” he said, tilting his hips into hers. “We'll pay the fine.”

She laughed against his neck. “Tempting, but I think Baelish would do more than fine us.” 

“You're probably right,” he sighed. “You should go first, though. I need a minute.” He pressed his hard length against her thigh and she briefly considered the feasibility of making it all the way to her driver's room and back before the press conference was done. Odds were not in her favor. 

“Alright,” she said, disappointed, and he swatted her on the butt as she stepped away. 

“Go get 'em,” he said, grinning and tousled and still obviously erect. 

“I love you,” she said, overcome with it, and his face softened with pleasure, the way it did every time. 

She carried that image of him with her through the media questions, including one directed towards Jon on Robb's other side. 

“Brienne has beaten you twice now, Jon. How does it feel to have lost two times to a woman?”

Brienne winced, and leaned over to look at him. He glanced her way before addressing the journalist. “Losing always feels bad, no matter who I'm losing to. Why does it matter if she's a woman?”

“Motorsport is manly,” the man said, digging himself deeper. 

“What does that mean – 'manly'?”

“You know. It's dangerous and requires speed and strength and giant balls.” He twittered nervously, and a few reporters nearby laughed with him, but everyone else was silent. 

Jon leaned forward. “You know the size of every driver's testicles, do you? What size are mine?” 

The man swallowed, his eyes darting around the room for help, but none was forthcoming and Petyr seemed willing to give him a little more rope to hang himself with. “It's just a figure of speech,” the man muttered. 

“It's fucking idiotic,” Jon said with more emotion than Brienne could remember ever hearing from him. “Most of you have done nothing but shit on her since winter practice, and now that she's doing well anyway, you're shoveling it over to the rest of us. It's a waste of your time and especially ours. I'm not going to answer one more fucking question about what it's like having a woman on the field. We're not a bunch of superstitious sailors afraid of cursing our boats. You want to talk about giant balls? Then we should talk about the fact that Brienne has started every race this season, and finished almost all of them while the drivers she's stuck with called her names and made lewd jokes.” 

Melisandre straightened in her chair, and she started typing quickly on her phone. 

“You think I ever had a driver threaten to fuck me just for daring to challenge them on the field? No wonder there are so few women in the sport. I'm sick of it and I'm sick of you all focusing on it. Ask the same damn questions you'd ask me if she were a man, or shut the fuck up.” 

Jon shoved his microphone away and sat back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest. Brienne stared around the room, entirely at a loss for what to do. 

“Jon's right,” Robb said, stepping in for her. “Let's focus on questions about the race. Or about me; you know I'm always happy to talk about myself.” He smiled and the tension receded, the reporters chuckling a little, their shoulders easing down. 

The rest of the press conference went exactly as any other, and while Brienne only had a few questions directed at her, they were all about strategy and race conditions and nothing more. It was a relief to have to only talk about the mechanics of racing for once.

She tapped Jon on the shoulder when they were safely back in the cooldown room, the cameras finally pausing in their relentless coverage. “Thank you for what you said today.”

He shrugged, frowning. “It was a shit question. You drove a better race than me. I'm more upset about that than that you're a woman.” A small smile peeked out on his staid features. “Nice to show a different side of myself, anyway. I'm tired of being called the Iceman all the time.” He hurried off with Robb, and Jaime walked over, the waves of alcohol enveloping her just before he did. 

“Second place finish, Wrench,” he said, his arms wrapped around her. She heard cameras going off but didn't care. 

“I can't believe it.”

“I can.” He kissed her cheek and they started walking back to the garage. “No fancy car today, unfortunately, but I told them we'd have a team debrief tomorrow morning as I intend to debrief you personally tonight.” 

She flushed and laughed. “It took you this long to make that joke, I'm impressed.” 

“As you know, I'm all about restraint.” 

“Jaime,” she said, their hands swinging in time as they walked with fingers entwined, “do you think I should drive next season?”

“Do you want to?” He watched her, curious. 

Brienne considered it. Whether they beat Lannister Corp in the constructor's championship or not, they'd gained enough sponsors and experience to at least continue to field a decent car that could get her the occasional podium finish. If they didn't take Tywin down, he'd be a powerful enemy bent on revenge, but he'd also have his company and his money still and that might be enough to dissuade him. And if she didn't race, could she go back to being a mechanic? Would Jaime be race engineer for someone else? Would she wake up every morning and wish she was studying track with Addam or arguing tire choices with Bronn or sharing a late dinner with Arya while they looked at testing readouts? 

“I do want to,” she said. “I want to race again.” 

Jaime grinned at her. “Then we race.”

* * *

“You ready?”

Jaime looked up at Bronn standing in the doorway to the office, and then at the clock on his monitor and sighed. It was already past seven, and he still had at least three emails he needed to get to. 

“I'll take that as a no,” Bronn said, his tone dry. He entered the room and shut the door behind him, sitting in the office's extra chair.

“I'm sorry. There's just so much _work_ when you're trying to lead the whole team.” 

“And yet you only have one driver.”

“She is a handful,” Jaime said, grinning. 

Bronn rolled his eyes. “Don't push me, Lannister, I only agreed to beers with you because it's been awhile.”

“Give me... ten minutes? I need to do at least this last thing and then I can pick up the rest later tonight.” 

“We can reschedule, it's not like I'm going anywhere.”

“No,” Jaime said quickly as Bronn started to rise from the chair. “I can keep it to five minutes, max. I promise. We've already pushed this off twice.” 

Bronn huffed but he sat back down and Jaime rushed through the email he was in the middle of. He'd asked Bronn out to drinks before Highgarden, and they'd been so busy they couldn't make their schedules work. Though that was, admittedly, mostly Jaime's fault and he had sworn he wouldn't miss it again. 

While Bronn played some game on his phone, Jaime typed as fast as his hunt-and-peck technique could take him, read through the email with squinted eyes and wondered if he should break down and consider glasses, and then hit send, hoping if there were any flipped around letters, there weren't too many of them. “There,” he announced, glancing at the clock again. Six minutes, but not too bad.

Bronn shut his phone off. “What's your plan?”

“We order some pizzas and drink the beer I have in the small fridge over there.” 

“No bar?”

“Bars are loud,” Jaime said, and hoped Bronn wouldn't ask for more. He had an explicit reason for asking Bronn to hang out beyond just wanting the man's acerbic company. A noisy bar would make it impossible to talk more than a little, but a restaurant seemed too formal. Pizzas and beer were just right. 

Bronn pursed his lips. “I get to take leftovers home.”

“Deal.” He ordered their usual – pepperoni, sausage, olives, bell peppers, and “enough cheese you could build a life-size cow out of it” – while Bronn grabbed the six pack Jaime had shoved in the little fridge in the office and opened two bottles, handing one to Jaime. They clinked the necks and drank. 

“I just realized I missed lunch today,” Jaime said as the beer slid down his throat into his empty stomach. 

“What a surprise. Maybe someday you'll learn to pack a sandwich.” 

“I appreciate that your lack of sympathy hasn't changed over time. The consistency is very comforting.” 

“I'm known for my people skills,” Bronn said, taking another drink. “Where's the future missus?”

“Gods, don't call her that,” Jaime laughed. “She's having dinner with Selwyn.” 

“How's it going between you and him?”

Jaime tapped the edge of his bottle against his prosthetic hand, the noise like a dulled bell. “Really well, honestly. He's been very welcoming.” 

“Good. You're not marrying him, but I know he and Chief are close. That could've been awkward if he'd hated you.”

“Who could hate _me_?” Jaime asked with his most disarming smile – one he knew would never work on Bronn, except to annoy him. On cue, Bronn rolled his eyes. 

“I can't imagine.” They were quiet for a minute and Bronn cleared his throat. “Anyway, I'm glad that's all working out for you,” he said gruffly. 

“You're getting sentimental in your old age.”

“Fuck off, I'm trying to be sincere.” 

Jaime blinked and held up his beer. “Then, thank you.” Bronn looked like he wished the chair would swallow him, so Jaime added, “Where's _your_ missus?” 

“Home taking a long bath, apparently. She couldn't hide her excitement that I wouldn't be home. This is the most we've seen each other in years; she's re-thinking wanting me to retire.” 

“Brienne intends to keep racing next year. I think we'll be able to afford it if we keep her current car instead of trying to build an entirely new one. I don't suppose you'd be willing to stay on, if you're reconsidering retirement?”

“I might be,” Bronn said, but for all his laconic ease, Jaime could see his eyes brighten.

“Good. We'll have Goodwin send you the new contract this week. I'm trying to get people locked down before Dragonstone; you know how the crew changes go wild at the end of the season.” 

“So no second Evenstar driver on the horizon?”

Jaime sighed. “Can't afford it unless we win some of the constructor money. Besides,” he waved his bottle in the air vaguely, “who would do it? Anyone coming in knows Brienne would be our number one driver, so he'd have to be ready to play the number two role.”

“Is Snow's contract coming up?”

“I don't know. He wouldn't do it anyway; he stood up for her, but there's no way he's leaving Direwolf unless they kick him out. There are no women in F2 and I'm hesitant to bring in another extreme rookie given the intensity of the scrutiny we'll be under. Honestly I wish the Mormont girl was eight or nine years older, she'd be perfect.” Jaime laughed a little thinking about her very serious face last year when she'd been his Grid Kid. Brienne had kept track of and in touch with her since then, and she was destroying her karting competition. “We can't afford another car and crew right now regardless, so it's a pointless exercise.” 

“You think we'll beat him?” Bronn asked, watching Jaime over the rim of his bottle as he took a drink. 

“I think we can. Two podiums in two weeks? That's not a fluke.”

“Lancel's been driving better, too. Best I can remember seeing him.” 

Jaime thought of his cousin, hunched over in the shadows. Whatever assuredly terrible thing Jaime's father had told Lancel, it was working. He was driving like a man possessed – or at least one who knew his future relied on not faltering for a moment. Jaime was getting a little worried about him; he'd looked gaunt at Storm's End, glaring at everyone and everything, his lazy smugness gone. It reminded Jaime of himself, those first years after Aerys. 

“She beat him in Storm's End. She can beat him in Dragonstone, too.” 

“Prep going all right for that?”

“Same as always. Of course we had to use a race from two years ago since I wasn't at last year's, but it'll do. Dragonstone never changes, they're too stuck on their tradition.” 

“And Aerys.”

Jaime looked over at Bronn and smiled ruefully. “Yeah. I think they'd feel like changing the track at this point would be as bad as exhuming his grave. Morbid, if you ask me.” He finished off his beer and Bronn opened another one for him without asking. 

“You ever re-watched that race?” Bronn asked. If he'd been anyone else, Jaime would have suspected he'd manipulated the conversation to get here, but Bronn wouldn't waste a minute trying to go around a subject when he could just ask it directly. 

“No. It's never seemed worth it.”

“But you watched Harrenal.” Bronn finished off his own beer and got another one. 

Jaime shrugged. “I didn't have a lot of choice on that; I needed to, to help Brienne.” 

“And watching your crash with Aerys would only help you, so it's not worth it?” Bronn's voice was nonchalant, but it still punched Jaime in the chest. He clenched his fingers around the sweating bottle. 

“It's the past. The distant past. What's the point?”

Bronn arched an eyebrow. “You think that crash has no bearing on your life now, do you? Then you should be fine watching it.” 

“Don't try to use your pedestrian psychology on me,” Jaime said, waving his bottle at Bronn. “I go to a real therapist now. I can see right through you.” 

Bronn snorted, but they were interrupted by a ding on Jaime's phone. Jaime looked down and grinned. “Pizza's here!”

They met the driver, looking confused in the parking lot, and Jaime tipped triple for his troubles, before they returned to the warm office. It was cool in Tarth in October, and the air smelled like rain. But the pizza was steaming and he and Bronn chatted about the successes of the last few weeks, what Bronn and Lollys had gotten up to in the summer, and, eventually, about Jaime and Brienne's engagement. 

“You two settle on a date?” Bronn asked once they'd demolished most of the box. 

“Nope. Sometime after the season is done is all we've agreed to. Neither one of us wants to worry about getting all that arranged right now.” 

“You should ask Lollys to do it, she's good at that kind of thing.”

“Really? You think she would?”

“Not like we'll have any other kids for her to impose herself on, might as well be you.”

Jaime let the _other_ in that sentence go unremarked, but he hid a smile behind his third beer. “Speaking of the wedding,” he said, pouncing on the opportunity. “I have a question for you. I know we don't have a date yet, but I was wondering if, uh,” Jaime cleared his throat. He hadn't expected to be this nervous, but it was impossible to know how Bronn would feel about him asking. Nowhere to go but through, he supposed. “Do you want to be my best man?”

Bronn's bottle paused halfway to his mouth, not abruptly and not even for long, but long enough that Jaime noticed, and understood what that meant for Bronn in proportion. “What about your brother?”

“Tyrion will be there no matter what, and I love him, but he's not a great best man. He'd be too focused on the pre-party and not care enough about the actual wedding.” 

“And Addam? You've known him longer than me.” 

“Technically, yes. But there were a lot of years there I didn't talk to him at all, yet I talked to your sorry ass. No matter how often I tried to throw you off, you hung around. You're like a particularly sticky piece of gum.”

Bronn made a face. “I'm touched. You sure you trust me to pull it off?” 

“If you don't want to do it, you can just say no,” Jaime said, sharper than he intended. 

“I do want to do it,” Bronn said, just as sharply. 

“Fine, then do it.”

“All right, I will.”

“Great.” Jaime huffed. “Why are you mad about this?”

“I'm not mad, I thought you were.” 

Jaime rubbed his hand down his face; his fingers were wet from holding the bottle. “Why all the questions, then?”

“I just wanted to make sure I wasn't your fallback choice.” Bronn couldn't quite meet his eyes. 

“Would you have said no if you were?”

Bronn shrugged. “No, but I would have made you beg more.” 

Jaime shook his head and laughed a little. “Gods, I'm going to regret this.” 

“Maybe a little,” Bronn agreed as he toasted Jaime with his bottle. They sat in easy silence for a minute, finishing off their drinks. “Thank you for asking,” Bronn said quietly, his voice soft as a worn tire. 

Jaime hadn't been lying – when he'd first thought of someone as his best man, he hadn't even considered Tyrion, and though his renewed friendship with Addam was welcomed, there was still that blank space in the middle where they'd been distant for so long, a space that Bronn had always hovered around, no matter what Jaime had said to push him away. The evening of last year's launch party, when Bronn had admitted he wasn't sure whether Jaime had killed Aerys on purpose, it had felt like Bronn had stabbed him in the gut. 

Bronn had always just been there, it seemed. Even when Jaime was kicked back to F3, Bronn had reached out to him, kept tabs on his career, had jumped from F1 to join his team in his last couple of years in F2. Jaime hadn't understood it at the time, but he did now. They'd both been terrible at friendship for a long time, for very different reasons, but it hadn't stopped them from becoming friends anyway. Neither of them was still much good at it, but at least they were both aware of it now. 

So instead of an emotional speech, all Jaime said was, “Thanks for agreeing,” and it was understood between them, as it always had been.

* * *

After Bronn had left with the last two slices of pizza, Jaime sat in the office lit against the darkness and searched online for a replay of Aerys' final Dragonstone race. There were multiple uploads of the whole thing, all of them with a startling number of views. 

“Never underestimate the bloodthirsty public,” Jaime mused aloud to the empty room. He clicked on the most viewed one and expanded it to full-screen. 

Brienne had offered once to watch this race with him, and he considered waiting until he got home to do it now, before ultimately discarding the idea. Jaime wasn't worried about her judgment, but this was a private battle, a ghost of his past that only he could exorcise. He wanted to conquer this particular dragon of his nightmares on his own, to prove to himself that he could. 

The replay started with a recap of the season in general, a review of Aerys' season in particular, and a quick update on Brandon Stark after his so-called “tragic accident.” Then it cut to a shot of Jaime, going through his pre-race routine. Gods, he looked so fucking _young_. Nineteen and as arrogant and full of himself as he'd ever been. His curling hair was shoulder-length, his face was slender and sharp, his lean frame nearly vibrating with energy; he was the picture of vigorous youth. He was talking to Selmy in the shot, and there was a dated-looking graphic showing where he and Aerys were in the world championship standings. Then a quick flash to Tywin, glaring out of the Lannister Corp garage, younger, too, but no less cold than always. 

Jaime sped through the formation lap footage and the start of the race, before pausing to watch Aerys' first pit stop to look for Bronn on the pit crew. He made a note to gently nudge Bronn about how much more hair he'd had back then, though of course Bronn would inevitably blame the loss of it on him. 

He fast-forwarded again until two laps before the crash. It had been eighteen years since it had happened, but Jaime remembered every moment in perfect detail. There was none of the loss – or subversion – of memory as he had with Harrenhal, even though there had been plenty of nights when he wished there was. 

But it all played out exactly as he remembered: Aerys and Selmy in a close race until Selmy pulled ahead; Jaime just behind them and creeping closer with his aggressive, attacking technique; the swerve of Aerys' car that would have been imperceptible to anyone not looking for it, and Jaime's abrupt turn into his own teammate. Aerys' car flew off of the fresh kerb and came to a deafening halt and like that, the course of Jaime's entire life changed. 

His own car had a blown tire and the camera followed his car to a stop, flashing back occasionally to Aerys', but the media had never been as interested in putting smoking heaps of metal on air as the fans seemed to want. There were track judges and fans rushing out to the car to check on Aerys, but Jaime knew it was already too late. 

Onscreen, he watched himself climb out of the car while the announcers proclaimed the race over in hushed, horrified voices. He took his helmet off and his hair was sweaty and flat against his head, the excitement of before the race completely drained away. But the biggest change was the look on his younger self's face. 

It seemed Jaime had not remembered every detail exactly right. In the years since this day, whether by necessity or external pressure, Jaime had believed the cockiness of being the Kingslayer, the protective armor he'd pulled around himself when no one wanted to hear him, had been his first and natural response. Of course no one would listen to such a haughty and swaggering teenager; if he'd only been more humble, if he'd only been less himself, perhaps things would have gone differently. 

In that moment, though, Jaime's heart ached for the boy staring in abject horror at his teammate's – his one-time idol's – destroyed car. Even knowing how Aerys was, what he had done, what he'd certainly tried to do to Selmy, the Jaime of that afternoon looked as lost and terrified as a child alone on a dark sea. Jaime felt a surge of fierce protectiveness towards the young man on the screen. Given where he was now, Jaime wouldn't change the course of his life, but he wished he could tell that boy to hold on, that he’d find the light again. 

For eighteen long years, Jaime had been the Kingslayer first and foremost – to the fans, to the other drivers, even to himself. But no one had called him that since Viserys had spit it at him in Myr, months ago. The name that had been so much of who he saw himself as had dropped out of memory like an old acquaintance. 

Realizing it now, Jaime felt, unexpectedly, _guilty_. Even though it hadn't been his intention, even though Aerys had been terrible and dangerous, Jaime had killed the man and it seemed wrong to be able to forget what that meant. Especially when it was due to the wash of such happiness that it sometimes overwhelmed him, like the first time he'd driven a Formula 1 car and the unleashed speed had stolen his breath. Waking up every morning with Brienne, watching her ground herself by simply touching the ring he'd given her, coming into work and seeing the team's welcoming smiles, had unleashed his whole life. 

But Samwell was right: Brandon Stark had not been Aerys' only victim. And the face of that frightened boy that Jaime had been was proof. 

Jaime closed the video window, turned off his computer, and packed up for the night. He texted Brienne to let her know he was on his way, rubbed his arm where it ached from having his prosthesis on for so long. Normally it was dark on the main, mostly unlit road around Tarth, but the rainclouds had come and gone while Jaime was in the office and the moon was full and bright, coloring the asphalt and the ocean with the same silvered glow. When Jaime arrived home, he walked into the house and there was Brienne stretched out on the couch, reading the Arthur Dayne biography for the third time. She looked up and smiled in the way she saved just for him. 

“Hi,” she said happily. “How did it go with Bronn?”

“Good.” Jaime took off his shoes, set his jacket on the hook by the door. She moved her legs and he sat next to her on the couch, near but not touching. “He said yes.” 

Brienne beamed at him. “I knew he would.” He couldn't seem to return her smile, and she gently touched his shoulder. Her fingers were warm, a slight enough pressure but they grounded him. “What else happened?” 

“I watched the Dragonstone race where Aerys died,” he told her, and when he started to cry, softly and cleansing as a spring rain, Brienne gathered him in her arms and held him close.


	47. November (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Two more races_. It rebounded in her head constantly, like the chiming of a clock. Two more races and they would know if she had done it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news! I've got the two chapters after this written and am editing them now, and I'm working on the last story chapter and have had about half the epilogue written for a couple of months. Which means I should be able to make once-a-week posting until we're done. We're officially in the home stretch.

**Lannister Corp: 159 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 153 pts**

Brienne placed second again at Dragonstone and it had not felt any less meaningful, though it had felt considerably more awkward with Lancel up there with her at third, his eyes glowing embers of furious despair. Even worse had been Tywin in the Lannister team crowd, with his icy glare locked on Brienne. Evenstar Racing was still behind Lannister Corp in the Constructors' Championship standings, but only by three points, and she'd beaten Lancel in the last two races. There were only two races left after Dragonstone, and both were critical. If they could end like this again in Maidenpool – Brienne at second and Lancel at third – they'd be tied, and then it would all come down to the final race of the season in King's Landing. 

The championship, the money, the chance to cut off the lifeblood that Tywin Lannister had done so many terrible things to guzzle down – they would all be in reach. She just had to keep driving like she could win. 

To meet that goal, Brienne threw herself with vigor into her preparation during the week between Dragonstone and Maidenpool: long hours on the simulator, long hours in the gym, long hours in meetings to discuss everything from her braking strategies to studying how her closest opponents were likely to attack the track. By the time Thursday evening rolled around, her brain felt stuffed full, her body stretched to its limits. 

Some of the crew had left on Wednesday to get the command center and garage ready; the car and the rest of the crew had left this morning to give them time to build everything out again before practice tomorrow. Normally, Jaime and Brienne would have left with them, but they'd opted to do most of their strategy work in Tarth and fly out Friday instead. Jaime hadn't been thrilled about the early morning flight, but with only one week instead of two between races, he knew as well as she did that it was worth the extra hours at home. 

It also meant they had time for an overdue dinner with her father and Elenda that night. Jaime and Elenda took over food preparation and kicked their respective partners out of the house, and Brienne and her dad wandered down to the shore to walk the beach together while they waited. 

It was a cold night, the year having settled firmly into fall's embrace, the wind whipping in off of the sea stinging her cheeks with the chill. Brienne was wearing one of her favorite old, flannel-lined jackets zipped up to her chin, and her dad had a matching one; two points of faded yellow against the gray sky growing darker. 

Brienne loved the beaches of Tarth in the fall, when the weather was brisk but not freezing and the tourists had all gone home again, uninterested in the sapphire waters when they weren't shining in the sun. This summer had been particularly unusual as a few of the tourists had stopped her and Jaime for the occasional picture and autograph. Not enough to be overwhelming or intrusive, but the whole thing had been so _strange_. Especially since the islanders themselves seemed so stoically disinterested in her growing fame. Proud, yes – both that one of their own was succeeding in the world and that she was doing it from Tarth itself – but she was still “Selwyn's girl who wasn't quite right.” 

She'd always been one of them – every islander would band together against the world first. But she was an oddity nonetheless, the person that could never fit in even on an island full of independents. Now she was surrounded by the entire mismatched collection of Evenstar Racing and she'd never felt more herself, welcomed because and not in spite of it. What had Tywin called them? A “ragtag team of castoffs”? Brienne ducked her head against the wind and smiled down at the rocky shore. He wasn't wrong, and she wasn't insulted by it at all. 

“How much longer do you think until they're ready?” Selwyn asked, looking back up the road towards the house. He and Brienne had been out walking in companionable silence for ten minutes, listening to the sound of waves crashing in a steady whoosh and rest, the occasional sharp ache of a seabird's cry cutting over top. 

“Another ten minutes probably. We can head down to the dock and back.” 

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “All ready for Maidenpool this weekend?”

“Yeah, I think so. I am.” She nodded, watching the ocean, the eternal waves as regular and relentless as time itself.

“You've been doing really well. Three podiums in a row, that's fantastic.”

“I'm hoping we can keep it up.” 

“It must be wonderful to be up there.”

Brienne looked over and he was staring ahead, his eyes wistful. “You could always come and see for yourself.”

Selwyn sighed. “You know I can't.”

“I know you _won't_.” 

He glanced at her and then away. “Still the same in the end.” 

“But it doesn't have to be.” She stopped and he took another step before stopping, too, though he still didn't look at her directly. “There are only two races left, Dad.”

“Thank the Seven for that.” 

“I'm going to race again next year.”

He did look at her then, big-eyed and shocked. “No,” he breathed, not a command but an exhalation of shock. “When did you decide that?”

“After the Storm's End Grand Prix. This isn't going to be done – _I'm_ not going to be done – when this season ends. I love driving, and I'm good at it.”

Selwyn rubbed one big hand over his face, revealing an ocean's worth of deep lines. He'd aged twenty years in a second. “I don't know what to tell you, Brienne.” 

“Tell me you'll come watch me race.”

“You know I won't,” he parroted back to her, and she grimaced at the bite in his tone.

“Why not?”

His stare was heavy. For a moment she was fifteen and ten and six again, her father's disappointed eyes louder than any yelling he could have done. “I think you know.”

Brienne clenched her hands into fists in her pocket, grabbing the fabric for strength. “I want to hear you say it. So you know how ridiculous it is.” 

“Brienne--” 

“I'm not Galladon, Dad. This isn't a shitty truck on a dark road.”

“That's enough,” he said sharply. 

“Please,” she begged. “I've tried to ask you for as little as I could, because I never wanted to be a burden with everything you'd lost, but I'm asking you this. I want you to see me race. I want you to see me win.” 

“No.” His voice was weak, but he was as solid and unwavering as ever. “I _can't_.”

“You won't even try!” 

“You don't know what it was like. _I lost my son_.” The agony in his voice and eyes was as fresh as the day Galladon had died. 

“And I lost my brother!” she shouted hoarsely into the wind. His head snapped back, startled and hurt. Brienne struggled to inhale past the tightness in her lungs. “You're not the only one who has a hole in their life where Gal used to be.” 

They were both quiet, Brienne facing her father, her father facing the sea. “Do you know what I do during your races?” he eventually asked, when the salt air had carried away the echo of their grief. She shook her head. “I go to the garage, I turn off my phone, and I put on some music. Something that reminds me of you. And then I work. If I stayed home, I'd be too tempted to put on the race, but at work I feel like... like maybe I'm helping you by fixing the car in front of me. It's ridiculous, of course, but I can't just do nothing. When the race is done, I turn my phone back on and wait for Elenda's text. And in that minute while I'm waiting--” His voice went thick and he choked to a stop. The ocean pounding against the shore behind her was the only sound. “The only thing that saved me when Galladon died was you,” Selwyn said, so soft it was almost drowned by the waves. He looked at her, finally, and his eyes were as deep and sad and ancient as the sea in winter. “I won't try to talk you out of racing, Brienne, but I can't stand there for two hours just praying that you'll be safe.”

Brienne had known this wouldn't be easy for him, but she had never imagined it would be this difficult. 

“We could find work--” she started.

“_No_,” he snapped, the loudest she'd ever heard him. It was blown away by the wind coming in from offshore. “Don't ask me again. I'm going back.” 

He turned for home, starting off without looking to see if she followed. She stood on the beach until he disappeared down the street, and then she turned to watch the sea. Her hair was stuck to her cheeks and chin, her nose so cold it ached, but she stayed until she heard footsteps in the sand. 

She was startled when it was Elenda who stopped next to her. The other woman was wearing a fashionable winter coat that would fit in better in the city than on Tarth, and had a warm woolen scarf wrapped around her neck and almost up to her nose. 

“Selwyn's very stubborn,” Elenda said, muffled by the scarf. 

“Yes,” Brienne said, hesitant. They'd grown closer with regular dinners over the last months, but it felt wrong to talk about her father with his girlfriend. 

“Seems like a trait that he passed on.” Brienne didn't say anything to that, felt Elenda's knowing eyes on her face. “He loves you more than anything in the world, Brienne. I've tried talking to him about this, and he won't budge. But I thought...” Elenda turned to face her fully. “I thought maybe I could go with you this weekend, to Maidenpool. I know it's not the same, but I... I care for you, too, and I'd love to see you race.” 

Brienne looked at the other woman, her black and silver hair pulled into a loose bun, her eyes hopeful. Elenda had been trying to reach out to Brienne since the beginning, not as a bridge to Selwyn, but just to connect. Gentle forays, always eased into with a smile and a kind laugh. Not trying to intrude, but to quietly ask her way into Brienne's sphere. 

Brienne didn't remember much of her own mother, and she suspected most of what she did came from the stories she'd been told, the videos and photos they had, instead of actual memory. Elenda didn't have any children of her own, either, and no regrets about it. But perhaps they were both looking for an opportunity to test something new: not friends and not family, rather an uncertain space in between, where they could combine into something uniquely their own. 

“I'd like to have you there,” Brienne said, and though Elenda's mouth was hidden by the scarf, the smile was clear in her eyes. “Talk to Shireen tomorrow and she can get you a flight and booked into the team hotel.” 

“Wonderful! Thank you. I'm so looking forward to it.” Elenda squeezed Brienne's arm and then hugged her, brief but tight. “Dinner's waiting, and so is your worried young man. I suspect if we don't get back soon, he'll be coming to check on you, too.”

Brienne smiled a little. “Let's head back and spare him the trip.” 

Elenda tucked her arm through Brienne's as they started walking. “Did Selwyn tell you what he does on race day?” 

“Yeah,” Brienne sighed. “Phone off and head deep in a car.”

“And did he tell you what he does afterward, when it's done and I've told him you're safe?” 

Brienne looked down at the other woman, but she was watching the ground, picking her way amongst the rocks. “No.” 

“He goes to the sept to give thanks. Then he comes home and he watches the entire race. He's been on this journey with you, Brienne, even if he's a few steps behind.” Elenda patted Brienne's wrist. “I hope that helps, at least a little.” 

It did, Brienne realized. And when she hugged her father goodbye that night as they were leaving, she kissed his cheek and whispered, “Thank you,” and hoped he understood.

* * *

This close to the end of the season, even Evenstar's normally rambunctious crew were buckled down and moving in tight, focused steps around the garage on Friday. Addam took Elenda on a tour of their facilities while Brienne ran through free practice, letting the familiar motions and routine soothe her steadily growing nerves. 

_Two more races_. It rebounded in her head constantly, like the chiming of a clock. Two more races and they would know if she had done it. Her car was in peak condition, and after three podium finishes in a row, Brienne had never felt more confident in her own abilities. 

But Lancel that day was a force of nature even in practice, and when she took Elenda on a walk down the line of garages, he was pacing the Lannister Corp area like a lean, anxious lion. His hair had grown out and his face had grown thin and she could barely remember the indolent, casually haughty man he'd been just last year. He reminded her a bit of Jaime when they'd first met, though there was a cold and desperate edge to Lancel's anger that Jaime hadn't had. At least Tywin wasn't there, too, though Kevan watched them with cool green eyes as they walked past. 

During the second practice session, Brienne didn't see Elenda at all, and when she pulled in for a wing change, Jaime said she'd gone back to the hotel. 

“I hope I didn't bore her today,” Brienne worried. It had made her happier than she'd expected to introduce Elenda to the other drivers – her friends, she'd recognized by the end of it. 

Drogo had shaken Elenda's hand and grinned down at her. “Glad to see Brienne's bringing more women into F1.”

“Oh, no, I'm just here to cheer her on,” Elenda had said. “Although I do make a mean casserole, I guess I could do some catering.” 

“Maybe I'll get Illyrio to make you an offer; our cafeteria sucks,” Drogo had said, laughing. 

When they'd stopped by Stag Motors' garage, Renly and Loras were standing near each other, and Brienne noticed they looked less strained than they had for a few weeks. 

“This must be the most handsome driving team,” Elenda had said, and both Renly and Loras had looked inordinately pleased by the comment. 

Oberyn had taken Elenda's hand and kissed the top in a chaste but charming manner, and Theon had given her an awkward but just as charming smile. Women were a rare enough sight on the track; older women may as well have been unicorns. Some of the drivers' mothers would occasionally watch the races from the paddocks when they were in town, but even fewer of them hovered around the garages. Not by choice, Brienne suspected, but because it had so rarely been expected that a woman would care about the mechanical side of things. Elenda didn't have any particular interest in engines, but she'd asked Jon a few well-placed questions about his car while Robb and Brienne had stood side-by-side and watched them. 

“What's your next challenge, Tarth?” he'd asked. “I stand ready to beat you one last time this season.” 

She'd snorted and thought about King's Landing as the next and final chance they'd have this season to do their silly one-upmanship. “I haven't decided yet,” she said. 

“You could just let the season run out. I believe we're tied. Protect your dignity.” 

“Protect yours, you mean. Don't worry, I'll let you know.” 

Robb had just grinned in anticipation. 

That night, the Evenstar team filled a nearby restaurant to have an unusually subdued dinner. It wasn't something they talked explicitly about at any team meetings, but the crew had whispered amongst themselves enough that they all knew the goal was beating Lannister Corp, even if they all weren't exactly sure why. The anticipation was so thick around the tables at dinner that Brienne could only pick at her food. 

The tension followed her to bed, too, and she rolled around restlessly for hours, first too hot under the covers, then too cold on top of them and _two more races_ still chiming regularly. Jaime was unmoving next to her, though when she accidentally kicked him around one in the morning, he grunted and put his arm around her waist, pulling her against his body. 

“Go to sleep,” he whispered in her ear. 

“I'm trying,” she whispered back. 

“Try harder.”

“It doesn't work like that.” She tried to wiggle out of his grasp but he just tightened his arm and pressed his chest fully against her back. “You can go back to sleep,” she told him.

“Well, now I don't want to,” he said, nudging his leg between hers. 

“It's one o'clock in the morning, Jaime. You can't really want to have sex.”

He kissed her shoulder and she could tell from the press of his hips what the answer to that was. “You started it with your wiggling. Besides, it might help you sleep.” 

Brienne laughed softly. “That's very thoughtful,” she said, turning in his arms. 

It was dark, but not dark enough it could hide the flash of his bright smile. “I'm a giver,” he murmured, before lowering his head to the dip of her neck. 

She did fall asleep after they were done, and was awakened early by the ding of her phone, Jaime still half-sprawled on top of her. This time she escaped without waking him, and blinked blearily at the time and the text message. It was just after six and the message was from Elenda. 

'Good morning, Brienne' it read. 'I know this is early but I was hoping you and I could walk the track this morning. Watch the sunrise.'

She rubbed her eyes and glanced back down at Jaime, who was still breathing soft and steady. 'Morning,' she sent back. 'I'll meet you in the lobby at 6:30.' _At least it's November_, she thought. If this had been summer they'd have already missed it. 

'Sounds good. Just us, I hope.'

'Don't worry, Jaime hates sunrises,' Brienne typed back, smiling a little. She took a quick shower and sent a message to Sandor, telling him she was going and she wasn't alone and she'd see him at the track later, then left a hastily written note for Jaime telling him the same before she hurried downstairs to meet up with Elenda. 

The lobby was quiet this early on a Saturday morning, the receptionist giving her a calm “Good morning, Ms. Tarth,” as she walked past. Elenda waited near the doors, looking nervous. 

“Brienne,” she said. She smiled, but it didn't light her eyes. “I'm sorry for the late ask. Or early, I suppose. I didn't get a chance to talk to you last night and I figured today would be better than tomorrow.” 

“It's no trouble,” Brienne said. “We can grab a cab to the track.” 

They did, the car ride mostly silent while they stared out the windows at Maidenpool zipping past. The pink walls of the city were already starting to glow as dawn approached. 

The track was empty when the cab left them there, and it was eerie to be there without the bustle of the crowds, or even any of the crews. The morning was cool and promised a dreary day by the look of the low clouds. Because of Jaime's crash last season, yesterday had been Brienne's first time at the Maidenpool track, and she was looking forward to getting an extra walk in this morning with Elenda, to examine its ins and outs, to map the apexes with her feet. 

Brienne led them through the open area behind the paddocks down to Evenstar's garage, and from there out onto the pit lane. Elenda still looked nervous and Brienne put her hand on the woman's shoulder. 

“I really don't mind doing this,” she assured Elenda. “I love walking the track before a race, and it's not too early for me.”

Elenda wrung her hands and looked even more upset. “I need to tell you something,” she said. Brienne's stomach tightened. She hadn't had time to eat any breakfast before they'd come to the track, and the acid in her stomach rolled unpleasantly at Elenda's anxious face. 

“What is it?” Brienne asked.

“I'd like you to talk to somebody.” 

Brienne frowned, confused. “Like, a friend?”

“Not exactly. We're supposed to meet further down. I can explain as we walk.” She gestured for Brienne to follow and Brienne did, though her steps were hesitant. They started down the pit lane past the other teams' garages. “Now, please don't be mad, but someone reached out to me yesterday telling me they wanted to talk to you.”

“Someone?”

Elenda took a deep breath. “Kevan Lannister.” 

Brienne halted, shocked. “_What?_” 

They were in front of Griffin's garage, the doors still closed this early in the morning. Elenda held both of her hands up, like she was trying to keep Brienne calm. “I was wandering yesterday while you were at your practice and he came right up to me, said he knew who I was from the documentary and that he hoped I could do him a favor. He told me he was Jaime's uncle and he was upset that Jaime had been so distant and angry from the family.”

“They started it,” Brienne said tightly. 

“Tywin, yes,” Elenda agreed right away. “But you both spoke very highly of Jaime's aunt, and Kevan was so hopeful I could convince you to come talk to him alone. No Tywin, no racing pressure, just the two of you.” 

“If he cares so much about Jaime, why doesn't he reach out himself?”

“Do you really think Jaime would listen if Kevan tried that?”

Brienne couldn't deny that point. “I'm not going to force Jaime to talk to his family. Not after the way they treated him.” 

“You don't have to, but you could at least give Kevan a chance to explain to you. You can judge his sincerity for yourself and if it's not real, you walk away and never have to listen again. But don't you think Jaime would want to know, if his uncle is being sincere? You trust Willem, don't you?”

Brienne thought of Tyrion in that moment, and his warning not to trust any Lannister that wasn't already part of their team. But Tyrion was more suspicious than her by far, and Kevan had always seemed the weak-willed puppet to Tywin's machinations. If he saw the end coming, perhaps he really was willing to finally stand against his domineering older brother with the weight of Jaime and the Evenstar team holding him up. 

Sighing, Brienne nodded. “Fine. Take me to where we're supposed to meet him, and I'll listen to what he has to say.” 

“Good,” Elenda said, clasping her hands together. “You won't regret this, even if it turns out to be nothing. I told him we'd meet at the Lannister garage.” 

They started walking again, Elenda shooting her sidelong glances, and Brienne knew the woman was trying to figure out how angry Brienne was. _Plenty_, Brienne thought, though it felt a little unfair. Elenda was just trying to mend a family whose brokenness she didn't fully understand. Brienne expected little out of this meeting, but if Kevan were even partially willing to come to Jaime's side, she owed it to Jaime to hear him out. 

The Lannister Corp garage was quiet as they approached, the sun peeking up over the horizon and washing the Maidenpool track in light as pale pink as diluted blood. 

“Hello?” Brienne called, peering inside. There was a noise and she took a step nearer, squinting. It was still mostly dark in the garage. “Are you sure this was where we were supposed to meet?” 

Elenda walked closer, too, standing by a huge rack filled with parts and tires. “Yes. Seven, at the garage.” She checked her phone, and Brienne did, too, looking up quickly when she heard the sudden shriek of metal ripping a hole in the silence. The rack that Elenda was standing by wobbled and then, like a giant collapsing in a slow-motion action scene, started tipping towards her. 

“Look out!” Brienne shouted, but time had kicked into overdrive and the structure was moving too fast now to give Elenda a chance to get out of the way. Brienne had no choice but to leap forward, shoving Elenda two-handed out of the way just before the rack slammed down, crushing Brienne to the ground. She felt the bite of metal in her cheek, and then blood filled her mouth, and Elenda screamed.

* * *

Jaime woke to the insistent ringing of his cell phone. He fumbled for it but couldn't reach it in time before it went to voicemail. He checked who it was – Elenda, for some reason, calling him at seven-fifteen in the morning. The woman was nice, but she was a straight-to-voicemail-at-this-hour kind of a call. 

He reached over to Brienne's side of the bed and found it empty, and his phone started ringing again. 

A tremor of unease went through him but he checked and it was just Elenda again. It wasn't unusual for Brienne to get up before him, though she'd had trouble sleeping last night until after their time together and he'd expected her to sleep in at least a little this morning. His phone went quiet again and he sat up, rubbed his face, and saw the note next to his bedside table. Jaime grabbed it and was reading – _Good morning, Went to track early with Elenda to do walk-through. See you there. Love, Brienne_ – when his phone rang a third time. 

Jaime picked up immediately. “Elenda?”

“Jaime!” she said, her voice high and close to hysterical just in that one word. “There was an accident, you've got to come to the hospital.” 

The world and his heart stopped, and he struggled to ask the question he needed most to know and wasn't sure he could survive: “Is-Is Brienne--” 

“She's alive, but she's hurt. Please, they're taking her to Mooton Hospital. You can meet us there. I'm sorry, Jaime. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen.” 

That didn't make any sense but all he cared about was that Brienne was alive. Everything else could wait. “I'll leave now,” he said, hanging up. _She's alive_, he heard again, and his heart remembered how to beat, hard and fast and urging his body up and out of bed without him even thinking. He texted Sandor that he needed an emergency trip to the hospital and was gratified when the man responded immediately. 

They met each other coming out of opposite elevators a few minutes later. Sandor looked past Jaime like he was waiting to see Brienne, too, and his face transformed into a glower as dark and dangerous as a thundercloud. 

“Fuck,” he said. “Which hospital is she at?”

“Mooton. She--” 

“Went to the track without me. I know. She texted me at fucking dark this morning. It was so early I thought it would be okay.” 

They strode to the bus and Jaime laughed, half-hysterical himself. “The others are gonna wonder where the bus went.”

“Do you care?” Sandor growled. 

“No. Just get us there quickly.” 

Sandor did, faster than any bus had a right to go. The streets were still mostly empty, thank the gods, and Jaime held onto the seat as the bus careened around corners and ran through several yellow lights, and one red one, on their way to the hospital. _She's alive_, he told himself over and over, and used that thought to keep from screaming out loud. 

Sandor stopped out front and opened the door. “Go on,” he said. “I'll park and find you.” 

Jaime squeezed Sandor's shoulder in thanks on his way out and was only a step away when the door closed and Sandor tore off again. Not wasting any time himself, Jaime nearly ran into the ER waiting room, skidding to a halt when he heard Elenda call his name. 

“You're here,” she breathed, grabbing his hand. “Thank the gods you made it so quickly. Brienne's getting fixed up, they took her back. I told her I'd wait here for you.”

“She's awake?”

“Yes. Awake and aware. Just hurt. Oh, her face,” Elenda said, tears filling her eyes. Jaime wanted to yank his hand free but he took a steadying breath. 

“I'm going to go see her, but tell me what happened. Quickly.” 

“It's my fault,” Elenda moaned, her hands going tight around his. “I tricked her into coming to the track with me to talk to your uncle. He said he wanted to make amends and I believed him. I thought he wanted to talk.”

Jaime felt a cold, burning rage start in his gut, something more deadly than ice, more consuming than fire. “Did he hurt her?”

Elenda shook her head. “The rack fell on top of her. It was huge, I was standing next to it and she shoved me out of the way but the whole thing collapsed on her instead. She could have been killed.” 

“But she wasn't,” Jaime said, insistent. 

“She wasn't. It cut her, on her face. I screamed and a man came running over. I don't know his name, he was in the other garage, the one with the deer.” 

“Stag Motors.”

Elenda was crying openly now and when Jaime wrenched his hand out of her grasp she covered her face. “I was just trying to help,” she said from behind her fingers. 

Jaime left her crying there and went to the desk. “I'm here to see my fiancée,” he said. “Brienne Tarth. They brought her in a little bit ago.”

“Have a seat and I'll check on her status,” the nurse said.

“I'll wait here. Hurry up.”

The nurse gave him a brief, annoyed glance and disappeared into the back. The ER was quiet, empty except for himself, Elenda, and a woman sitting hunched over in a far chair, her head between her hands. The air tasted vaguely of antiseptic and old coffee. 

Elenda hesitantly walked up, and though her face was still tracked with tears, she'd gotten herself under control. “How can I help?” 

“Just stay here. Sandor will be coming in soon, keep him here with you. Let Selwyn know, too, if you haven't already.” 

Her face paled and she covered her mouth with a trembling hand. “I haven't,” she whispered. “I'll call him as soon as Sandor gets in.” 

The nurse came back and pointed at Jaime. “You can come back.” 

Jaime followed the nurse, heavy on her heels, trying to urge her faster than her steady, unhurried pace back to a small room. As they approached he saw Brienne was inside alone, sitting on the bed, her head circled with gauze to hold a large bandage in place over her cheek. There was bruising on her face and a matching shadow in the depths of her blue eyes. He pushed past the nurse and went to Brienne, hesitating in front of her. 

“Are you-- Can I--” Jaime asked, reaching without touching. She nodded and he wrapped her in his arms. She stiffened and made a small yelp of pain; he eased his grip until she relaxed her head against his. With her touch, he felt like he could breathe again. 

“Thank every fucking god in existence you're all right,” Jaime whispered against her temple, and she shuddered with a small exhalation. He kissed her un-bandaged cheek and pulled back enough to look at her, touching his fingertips to the bandage, his stump resting gently against her other cheek. In his haste he'd forgotten his prosthetic. “You _are_ all right?”

“No concussion. No broken bones. Just bruising and a bad cut.” She wasn't moving her mouth much and the words were slurred and flat as she struggled to form them without hurting her cheek. “Doctor coming back to stitch.” 

“Elenda told me some of what happened. It wasn't an accident, was it?”

Brienne's eyes – wounded and angry framed by the white gauze – told him everything he needed to know. The flaring rage in his stomach burned hotter, acid pouring through him. 

“After the doctor's done, I'm taking you back to the hotel and then I'm going to pay him a visit.” 

“No,” she said, surprisingly firm for how little she could move her mouth. He was getting ready to protest that there was no fucking way he wouldn't go after his father for this when she continued: “No hotel.” 

Jaime furrowed his brow. “We can head back to Tarth, then, but it might be hard to find a flight before this evening.”

“Not leaving. Racing.” 

He pulled back and searched her eyes. “You can't.” 

“I can. I'm fine.”

“Brienne, you can barely move your mouth to talk.”

“Don't drive with my mouth.”

Stubborn as always, even when it meant putting herself at risk when there was no need for it. “You don't have to do this for me. I thought we talked about that?” he said, grasping for whatever he could to convince her out of what she'd already so clearly decided. 

She narrowed her eyes at him, hard and deep blue as cut sapphires. “For me.”

“What about this?” he asked, brushing her cheek gently. “And this?” He skimmed the purple bruise under her eye, barely touching it. 

She didn't even blink. “It'll be fine.”

“Not when you'll need a helmet on top of it.” 

She huffed at him, a sharp, hard exhalation out through her nose like an angry aurochs. “Racing,” she said firmly, and Jaime glared back. If he was going to keep her from this, he'd have to lock her in the hotel room, or convince the doctor to keep her in the hospital long enough that she missed Q1 this afternoon. 

They both knew he wasn't going to do either of those things. 

“You're terribly stubborn,” he told her, and he saw the edges of her brows ease under the gauze. Jaime gently touched his lips to hers, then to her wounded cheek. For all Kevan was the one who tricked Elenda, Jaime knew it was his father behind it all. His father who had attacked Brienne in his desperate clutch for glory. “I'm sorry.” 

Brienne made an inquisitive noise, but the doctor came back in, pulling gloves on. “Let's get you all stitched up and back home,” the woman said. “If you could just stand to the side please.” She waved for Jaime to move back and he did, stepping around to Brienne's other side and holding her hand. The doctor glanced at Jaime. “Are you sure you'll be all right while I do this? I don't want to have to deal with you fainting while I work on her.” 

He held up his stump and waved it at her. “I'm not afraid of a few stitches.” 

“Not on yourself, but it can be different when we see it on loved ones.” 

“Just get on with it, we have places to be.”

The doctor lifted an eyebrow, unimpressed. “This will take as long as it takes. And the only place Brienne has to be after this is home to rest.” 

Jaime looked meaningfully at Brienne, and he saw a flush spread across the uncovered parts of her face. But he watched in silence as the doctor carefully unwound the bandage, uncovering an angry red gash, the edges jagged from where the metal had cut across. He could feel the pain of it in his own skin, but he forced himself not to look away. _My own fucking father_, he thought, swallowing down bilious rage. Brienne squeezed his hand and he brought it up and pressed his lips to her knuckles and tried to pretend he was as brave and strong as she was. 

The doctor worked efficiently and calmly, keeping up a light patter to distract both of them as she cleaned the wound again then stitched it closed with nimble fingers. Time seemed to stretch anyway, each small movement of the suture needle so painfully long Jaime's nerves needed sewing back together at the end of it. Brienne was quiet, but the grip of her hand on his was so tight it pressed his bones together. He didn't complain. Instead he thought about how he would pay Tywin back for every second of hurt he'd caused her. 

After the doctor had finished, she put a thick bandage over the wound, covering almost all of Brienne's cheek. She turned to face both of them when she was done. 

“We checked Brienne out for any head trauma from the fall, and she's fine. Based on palpitation we've determined she doesn't have any internal injury, either, so we opted not to do any further scans to look for internal bleeding, but we'll give you some information on what to keep an eye out for. There may be some significant bruising, so we'll provide some guidance on how to help keep that down, too. Your cheek should heal just fine,” she told Brienne, “though there will be a scar due to the severity of the cut. My professional medical advice is to get some rest over the next few days especially, but if you can keep things quiet for a week that would help even more.” 

“Thank you,” Brienne mumbled, not quite meeting the doctor's eyes. 

“I'll leave everything with the nurses, including care instructions and an antibiotic ointment for that laceration and you can pick it up at the front desk. Take care,” the doctor said, and she hurried back out, not unkindly, but with her mind already on her next task. 

“What time is it?” Brienne asked. 

“The doctor said you should rest,” he reminded her, already thinking about where Tywin would be at this hour. 

“I can rest tonight. If I don't drive qualifying I can't race tomorrow. Stop looking at me like that,” she grumbled, pressing her hand gingerly to her cheek as she got off of the bed. 

“I don't agree with this at all.”

“And I don't agree with you going to see your father, but that's not going to stop either of us.” 

Jaime's jaw twitched, he could feel the muscles contract all down his neck. “This is an attack,” he said, low and quiet. “We can't let him get away with it.”

“Exactly,” she replied, her stare boring into him. 

Jaime exhaled loudly, defeated. “It's almost nine. You already practiced yesterday so you don't have to do any laps this morning, you can show up just for qualifying later this afternoon and then you can go back to the hotel right afterward.” 

“When will you go see him?”

He snuck his arm around her and started directing her back out to the front. “I'm sending you back to the hotel with Sandor. I'll get a ride to the track from here.” 

“I want to come with you.” 

“Absolutely not.”

“He's not going to attack me in the paddock.” 

Jaime's arm tightened. “It will be worse if you're there.” Bad enough he'd have the memory of the wound when he faced his father; if Brienne were there, her bandaged cheek proof of what Jaime had brought down on her, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself at all. 

“Take Bronn with you, then. I don't want you to face him alone.” 

“All right. You rest until qualifying, and I'll take Bronn with me.” 

Brienne relaxed in his embrace. “Deal.” 

Sandor was in the waiting area when they came back out, frowning at the room. There were a few more people than when Jaime had gone back, but Elenda was nowhere to be seen. 

“What the fuck happened?” Sandor said loudly as soon as he saw them, and the nurse shot him a dirty look. 

“Altercation with a stationary object,” Jaime said. “Where's Elenda?”

“Said she had a call to make. You gonna live?” he asked Brienne, and she nodded. “If you're trying to copy me, you got the wrong side of the face.” 

Jaime watched Brienne smile a little and then grimace when it pulled the wound. She gingerly touched her cheek. “I'll remember that for next time.” 

“There's not gonna be a next time, because you're not going anywhere near the fucking track without me.” 

Jaime left the two of them to sort out that point of contention while he collected Brienne's paperwork and medicine, and then he motioned for them to follow him out. 

Elenda was outside, staring down at her phone, though as far as Jaime could see the screen was dark. When she heard them she looked up, and her face collapsed at seeing Brienne. “I'm so sorry,” she said, her voice rough with regret. “I swear I didn't know about any of this.” 

“Are you _sure_ the rack falling over wasn't an accident?” Jaime asked her and Brienne both. He knew it wasn't, deep down in the roots of his soul he knew this had all been intentional. But he had to ask. 

“I saw two men disappearing back into the garage right afterward,” Elenda said. “One of them was big, and I think he was bald. The other one was skinnier but I didn't see much of him. I was more worried about Brienne. If it was an accident, wouldn't they have stayed to help?” 

“Lancel's crew,” Jaime said to Brienne; her agreement was swift. Those two had been Martyn's lackey's last year, and had watched her punch Martyn into the ground earlier this season. They'd probably leapt at the chance to get their sick revenge. “Sandor, take Brienne and Elenda back to the hotel. I'm going to the track.” 

“Let me drop them off and then I'll go with you,” Sandor growled.

“Bronn's coming with me. You stay with Brienne. Get her and the crew back to the track in time to prepare for qualifying.” 

“That's fucking stupid.” 

“Take it up with her,” Jaime said, pointing at Brienne. She didn't need her mouth to express the full weight of her annoyance. Jaime kissed her again with as much tenderness as he could. “I love you.”

The annoyed edge softened, but not entirely. What he could see of her jaw was a tight, worried line. “Be careful, Jaime. I need you with me to do this.” 

He brushed his thumb over the puffed cotton of the bandage. “No, you don't. But I'll see you at the garage.” 

Jaime watched them walk off towards the parking structure, noticed the way Sandor hovered protectively near Brienne, how Elenda hung back still clutching her phone. There would be some navigating of tricky personal waters in the upcoming days. But for now, Jaime had his own rocky shores to avoid. 

And a long-overdue appointment with his father to keep.


	48. November (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So what's your plan?” Bronn asked quietly as they passed Sunspear's garage. 
> 
> “To try not to get thrown in jail.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finished writing the fic (well, except for the epilogue, but that's coming along, too) and I'm doing last edits now. In the process of writing the last parts, it did, in fact, expand one more chapter. Because of course it did. :) But the story is set now, and crested the 400k mark. So! Posting two chapters this week, since this one is on the shorter side. Thank you all for reading this far. I hope you enjoy the end!

**Lannister Corp: 174 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 171 pts**

Bronn met up with Jaime a short while later in front of the Evenstar Racing garage. 

“Not exactly how I figured we'd be spending today,” Bronn said in greeting. 

“No shit.” They hurried down the long pit lane, the sound of pneumatic drills and morning chatter accompanying them. The day was just beginning at the track, and the air was filled with electric anticipation. It would be even stronger tomorrow, though qualifying day was intense in its own way. For all he avoided Friday practice sessions, Tywin never missed qualifying, watching the progression of his team with his cold, judgmental stare. 

Jaime clenched his natural hand and on the other side felt the missing ache just past where his stump ended. He should have asked Bronn to bring his prosthetic with him, but it was too late for that now. 

“What happened?” Bronn asked. 

“My father hurt Brienne.”

Bronn whistled low. “Anything your fancy lawyers could nail his ass to the wall for?”

Jaime shot him a frustrated look and Bronn made a face. 

“So what's your plan?” Bronn asked quietly as they passed Sunspear's garage. 

“To try not to get thrown in jail.” 

Bronn snorted and they crossed Golden Company's driveway before they were at Lannister Corp's entrance. Jaime paused to look inside, but it was easy to see Tywin at his usual perch at the back of the command console, a king surveying the work going on all around him and finding every last part of it inadequate. Just the sight of Tywin, sitting there fully aware that he'd sent Brienne to the hospital and not giving a shit at all, was like pouring gasoline on the burning rage lit and waiting in Jaime's belly. 

Jaime strode through the garage straight toward his father, and Tywin looked up in time to see Jaime a few feet away, his eyes widening slightly before Jaime was on him. He grabbed the expensive fabric of Tywin's shirt and twisted it in his hand, before shoving Tywin backward into the wall behind him, his stool falling over with a crash. Tools dropped off the wall and clanged to the ground, skittering away. 

Tywin held his hands out to the people rushing to help, holding them at bay. Jaime could feel Bronn hovering behind and to the right. 

“I warned you that if you did anything to her, I would destroy you,” Jaime snarled.

“Are you going to assault me? In front of all these witnesses? Do you intend to be her race engineer from prison?” Tywin looked unimpressed, a slight sneer on his thin face, but Jaime could feel his father's chest heaving against his fist. 

“This is just a friendly chat,” Jaime said, lightening his tone while he pressed his fist harder into Tywin's sternum. “Trust me: you'll know when I'm assaulting you.” 

Tywin's eyes searched his, the familiar Lannister green turned to poison. “Why don't we talk somewhere more private then? The conference room in the command center will do.” 

“You can't seem to be trusted without witnesses yourself.” 

“I can't imagine what you mean. I arrived with the rest of the crew this morning.” 

Jaime shifted his arm until it was pressed against his father's neck, not hard enough to do any permanent damage, but enough to make his point. “Don't fuck with me,” Jaime said in a low, dangerous tone. “I know those were your orders.” 

Tywin swallowed, his throat bobbing against Jaime's arm. “My orders to what?” 

“To hurt her.” 

“I assume you're talking about Brienne. Though the rest I'm at a loss.” 

Jaime pressed his arm into Tywin's throat, making him push up onto his tiptoes to keep from choking, and the men surrounding them shifted closer. All other movement in the garage had ceased, and his and his father's ragged breathing were loud and syncopated. 

“Jaime,” Bronn said quietly. “He's a cunt, but he's right. The conference room might be better for this conversation.” 

The atmosphere thickened with expectation, waiting for Jaime's answer. He thought about slamming his fist into his father's face – regretted again he didn't have his prosthetic on for that – but the retribution would be swift. Not just from the beating the men around him would give, but from whatever charges Tywin would bring to bear after, and his lawyers were even fancier than Jaime's. Jaime made a growling noise of disgust and shoved Tywin into the wall again before letting him go. 

“Fine. But just you and me,” he told his father. 

“You sure that's wise?” Bronn asked, his voice cautious. 

“It's fine,” Tywin said, tugging his shirt back into place.

“Did I fucking ask you?” Bronn snapped. 

Jaime glanced back at Bronn and nodded. “Don't go far.” 

Tywin walked through the back of the garage and Jaime followed him, out into the paddock lane where the wandering media turned like they'd caught the scent of fresh meat. His father glared at them, and they lowered their cameras again. 

The Lannister Corp command center was the same as it had been last season, the conference room where Jaime had been through so many debriefs still all glass and modern-style table, the chairs as rigid and uncomfortable as ever. Tywin sat in the one at the head of the table, leaning back and resting his hands lightly on the arms. The far wall was all window, looking out on the track and the growing buzz of people running about, preparing for the day. A few of the media ran out and pointed their cameras at the windows, hoping to catch some glimpse of Jaime and his father, the rumors of what had happened in the garage surely spreading like wildfire. 

For all of Tywin's unconcerned air and his growling at the media, it was far safer for him to be here where they were on display before those same cameras, where violence could be easily captured and used against Brienne and Evenstar. His father didn't understand how Jaime's love was a strength, but he always understood how to use it as a weakness. 

Jaime breathed in deep. The air had no smell at all, not even the scent of the garage or the track. It was as bloodless and contained as Tywin himself. 

“Why did you come here?” Tywin asked.

_To beat you into the ground_ was the truth, but it had been an impossible desire from the start, no matter how vivid the image of Tywin's blood on the garage floor had been in Jaime's head. Jaime clenched his hand against his leg. “We're going to tell everyone about your role in my crash,” he said, the idea tumbling out as soon as it formed. “About the bankruptcy, the gambling. All of it.” When he turned to look at Tywin, his father's face was curdled with contempt. 

“You have no proof of anything.” 

“I can prove your accounts are empty and bleeding. Everyone already knows you hired Hoat based on Martyn's recommendation, and that Martyn made the bet. We can put all the pieces together for everyone so they can see Tywin Lannister isn't the perfect, blameless businessman he claims to be.” 

“I made no bet myself. Claiming I forced Martyn to do it is circumstantial at best. This looks like childish revenge if you do it now, so close to the end of the season and your team still behind us. You should have done it sooner if you meant to do it, nonsense though it might be.” 

“We had no reason to, though you tried to give us one.” 

Tywin lifted one eyebrow. “Talking to people isn't a crime, Jaime.” 

“Hiring people to attack someone is,” Jaime said between gritted teeth. 

“Good thing I didn't do that.” 

“Ramsay just happened to crash into Brienne? Racks just randomly fall over in your garage? Remarkable.” 

“A run of bad luck. She's all right, I hope.” 

“Fuck off,” Jaime spit at him. 

“Whatever you think I may or may not have done, I don't hate her.” There was something skating dangerously close to respect on his face when he added: “She's quite impressive.” 

Jaime glared at him, took a step nearer. “How can you say that, after everything?”

“I admire her strength and her tenacity. Brienne is --”

“Stop it!” Jaime shouted, slamming his hand on the table so hard the entire thing trembled and his palm stung. Tywin pulled back in his chair, a flash of fear briefly twisting his normally blank face. Jaime had not felt he was teetering so close to the edge of real violence until that moment, his fury a sword pulled nearly from its scabbard. But it was the very thought of Brienne that stayed his hand. “You don't get to appreciate her. You don't get to say her name. You don't get to spend one more second thinking about her unless it's regret that you'll never truly know how amazing she is.”

Tywin searched his face, and pursed his lips. “Very well.” He rolled his shoulders. “I don't hate you, either,” he added. 

Jaime waved his stump in Tywin's direction, his father tracking the movement. “This was just an unhappy accident, too?”

Tywin boldly met his stare. “I never would have intended that for you,” he said, as careful as ever to not give anything away. “I was sorry it happened.” 

Indignant, incandescent rage swarmed inside Jaime, a burning, living thing that wrapped long thin fingers around his throat, choking him. Jaime turned his back on his father to keep from putting his last good fist – and then Tywin's head – through the table. “Sorry,” Jaime ground out, his voice a guttering flame. It was impossible Tywin meant it; doubtful he even understood what such an apology would mean. Asphalt and concrete, garages and racing offices, even the warehouses where Jaime had done his earliest karting, had all been more a home to Jaime than the place he'd grown up. And it was all because of this man, who six months ago had wished Jaime had died. _Sorry_ didn't even begin to cover it. 

Struggling for calm, Jaime said, “We're well past the need for those sorts of lies, don't you think?” 

“None of it is a lie. You're my son, Jaime.” 

“A fact I regret every godsdamned day.” He heard Tywin's sharp intake of breath, but when Jaime looked at his father, there was no sign he'd moved at all, except for the slight whitening of the pads of his fingers on the chair arms. 

“It's true you never acted like it,” Tywin said. “You always were more like your grandfather. No understanding of family loyalty. Too quick to forgive debts, to let people walk all over you.” 

“People like you?”

“You never let me direct you at all. Of all the people in the world you should have obeyed, I was the only one you never could.” 

“'Obey.' Very fatherly of you.” 

“A father should be strong,” Tywin said, his voice cutting. “Mine was not, and look where the family is now.”

“The family you should have cared about is ruined. Cersei made herself miserable just to get your attention. Tyrion is exactly who you want me to be and you hate him anyway. You broke what our mother entrusted you with.” 

Tywin's eyes narrowed into thin lines of angry fire. “Careful, boy.” 

Like any true Lannister, Jaime used this fault line to shake Tywin apart. “If she were alive today she'd be disgusted with you.” 

“You don't know the first thing about her.” 

“If you think this is what she would have wanted, then neither do you.”

“_Watch your mouth_,” Tywin hissed. 

“Make me. Although you can't, can you? You really are as weak as your own father.” 

Tywin cracked and slammed his fist down on the table, shooting to his feet. Jaime tensed, eager for any excuse, knowing he shouldn't but wanting to with every aching muscle in his body. “Get out of here,” Tywin ordered in a jagged rasp. 

“Or what? Will you pay someone to hurt me more? Maybe finish what Hoat started?” Tywin gathered himself like a man shoring up for one last assault, and Jaime waited for it, for the words that would finally set him free from caring what his father felt about him. But Tywin just glared at him before turning for the door. 

“We _will_ tell everyone,” Jaime said, desperate to pull him back. 

“Go ahead,” Tywin snapped, spinning on one heel as sharply as a drill sergeant. “It won't make a damned bit of difference without actual proof. Martyn already confessed to working on his own, and whatever happened with the rack today, you can't tie to me. I was in the hotel lobby, eating breakfast surrounded by people, and so was Kevan. I'm not an idiot, Jaime. You have nothing, it will do nothing, and you will not beat us. Your only hope is that you get first in one of the next two races, and that will never happen.”

“She can do it.”

“But I won't allow it,” Tywin said in a dark voice that reached into Jaime's chest and squeezed his heart. For a moment Jaime was seventeen again and Aerys was warning him that he would win at any cost. 

Tywin was halfway out the door before Jaime was able to speak through the rage and remembered terror. “How is this worth it?” he asked hoarsely. “A legacy isn't more important than your family. Your children. _Me_.” 

His father paused, but he didn't look back. “If you have a son someday, you'll understand that it is.” 

“If I have a child someday, I promise you that they'll never even know your name.” 

Tywin turned his head slightly to the side, a lifetime's worth of bottled rage crawling along his jaw, but then he exited without another word, leaving Jaime alone with a promise he intended to keep.

* * *

The bus ride from the hospital to the hotel was quiet. Brienne felt Sandor's eyes on her in the rearview mirror, enough that she started to worry he was going to crash into something if he didn't pay more attention to the road. But they arrived safely in front of the hotel and she and Elenda – who had been silent and withdrawn in her own seat the whole ride – disembarked and headed into the empty lobby. Someone must have told the others they weren't leaving for awhile. Brienne was grateful not to have to wind her way through their well-wishes just yet. 

Elenda hurried off to the elevators without a word, and Brienne was relieved to let her go. She believed the other woman hadn't intended for it all to go so wrong, but it was hard to swallow how much her misguided intentions had almost ruined everything. Standing there, half-swaying without even moving, Brienne decided rest would be her best next step and aimed for the room she shared with Jaime. 

Brienne's cheek was a low, constant ache even with the pain medication they'd given her, and the bandage itched against her skin. The stack of papers they'd printed up for her care – no showers for a full day, timeline to get the stitches out, what to look for in bruising – were overwhelming, and she was glad to throw them down on the bedside table. The bed was unmade, cover thrown wide, and she worried about what Jaime was doing right now, what his intentions could possibly be. They were limited in what they could do to Tywin, especially as careful as he was to keep his own hands clean of his dirty crimes. Continuing to race would be the most effective form of revenge against him, but she'd seen the edge of willing retribution in Jaime's eyes and wondered if that would be enough for him. At least Bronn was there, too. Alone, Jaime would almost certainly let Tywin goad him into action; Bronn was uncouth, but he had a calmer head and, more importantly, Jaime would listen to him. 

Trusting in Bronn and Jaime both, she slipped off her shoes and set her alarm for an hour, before collapsing onto the bed. Brienne was exhausted from the fading adrenaline and trauma, all her limbs weighing her down like heavy ballast. She'd just curled into a mildly painful ball when there was a knock at her door. 

She considered ignoring it, but the person knocked again, a heavy thumping plea, and she sighed and forced herself up. Her body grumbled as she trudged to the door to peer through the peephole. Sandor's scarred face waited on the other side. 

“What's up?” she asked when she opened the door, yawning a little and then wincing at the pain of her wound stretching against the tight stitches. 

“You have a minute?”

“Yeah, come on in.”

He stepped into the room and then stopped just on the other side of the door. “This won't take long,” he said in his low, gravelly voice. “You shouldn't have gone by yourself to the track.” 

Brienne groaned and sat back down on the bed. “Can't you berate me later? I'm exhausted.” 

“What I mean is that you could have waited for me. It doesn't matter what fucking time it is, if you're going anywhere Tywin Lannister might reach, I'll go with you. I should have been with you.” 

“It's no one's fault but Tywin's,” Brienne said firmly. 

Sandor grunted. “It doesn't change the fact that I should have been there. I saw your message, I could have gone after you.” 

“Why? I was with someone, it was too early for any of Lannister Corp to reasonably be there. It didn't make sense for you to come.” 

“I'm not making the same mistake again.” 

She sighed. “Thank the gods there's only two more races.” 

“You're really gonna race this weekend?”

“Of course I am. We haven't all come this far to let a cut to my face stop me.” 

He watched her, a steady, disconcerting knowledge in his eyes. “They think it'll scar?”

“Maybe a little, possibly a lot.” Brienne touched the bandage and tried not to think about it, as she'd been trying not to think about it since they'd assured her that was her only wound. She hated the idea of anything of Tywin's marking her for the rest of her life. The only thing related to Tywin that she wanted in her life was Jaime, and even he was so far from his father they might as well be strangers. 

“You get used to it,” Sandor said, and his voice was so dry she chuckled even though it hurt her cheek. He turned his own hotel key card over in his hands. “When you get the bandages off and the stitches out, look at it every day. It's not gonna go away just because you don't look in the mirror. The sooner you accept it's real, the sooner you can say 'fuck it' and move on with your life.” 

“That's good advice,” she said sincerely. 

“Yeah, well, I have some experience.” He turned to go and then looked back. “You don't have to be heartbroken for us to go get a drink some time. I know other, less seedy bars.” 

Brienne's lips twitched into a gentle smile. “That's good to know,” she said. He nodded and let himself out of the room. She was still smiling when she fell asleep a few minutes later.

* * *

Restless and unfulfilled, Jaime paced the Maidenpool paddock lane waiting for the rest of the team to show up, though he purposefully avoided going anywhere near the Lannister Corp area. His heart – and his fists – kept trying to drag him that way, but for once his brain and his ego knew better and he kept his distance. The confrontation with his father had ultimately been, at best, a draw. They'd each landed a few hits, but Jaime was no closer to bringing his father down than he'd been hours ago. He didn't see how it could have gone any other way, unless he really did want to end up in jail. It was a bitter taste in his mouth nonetheless. 

Bronn stayed with him for awhile, then muttered something about being too old to waste his time walking in circles before he headed for the Evenstar garage to sit down. An hour before qualifying, Jaime spotted Sandor and Brienne walking towards him down the lane and he hurried to meet them. 

Brienne's face still had mottled bruising, but her eyes were clearer, less wounded and more determined.

“Didn't get arrested, I see,” Sandor said to Jaime, sounding disappointed. 

“Bronn wouldn't let me.” 

The other man made a noise and turned to Brienne. “You stay with him,” he ordered and she saluted. 

They watched Sandor walk off and Jaime put his arm gingerly around her waist. “Think he'll let you go to the bathroom unsupervised?” 

“Questionable.” She searched his face. “What happened with Tywin?” 

“Not what I wanted, but what I should have expected.” He ran his hand through his hair and glared around them. “It's so fucking frustrating to know that he can hurt someone I love and just get away with it. That there's nothing I can do.” 

“That's not true.” Jaime turned his glare on her, annoyed at being placated. “Listen to me,” Brienne insisted. “You've done plenty already. Evenstar Racing exists because you willed it into being, you work hard running it, and you're helping me win on top of that. Most importantly, you're not the twisted, bitter man your father wants you to be. You're true to yourself and you've taken all the shit he's thrown at you and made gold.” She paused and stepped around in front of him; all he could see were her big eyes, pretty and calm. “You think Tywin Lannister could have done any of the things you have? The only thing he's better at is being devious and cruel, and he can have that.”

Jaime tenderly cupped her injured cheek and she leaned her head into it, trusting his gentleness. She'd put all of herself into his hands with the same trust. “You're right,” he said. “As long as I have you, then I'll have won.”

She flushed a little, the purple of her bruises clouds across the pink dawn sky of her cheeks. “We'll have to arrange your prize for later after I'm not quite so sore,” she said, her mouth twitching with amusement. 

He leaned up on his toes and gave her a quick kiss. “You're sure about racing this weekend?” 

“Racing is what _I_ can do.” 

“All right.” He wanted so much to take her home and keep her safe, but he wanted to see her do this more. “Let's race.” 

It took some doing to get Brienne's helmet on over the bandage, and Jaime didn't miss the way she held her body tense as they shoved it on at her insistence. 

“Radio check,” he said once she'd climbed into the car and pulled out of the garage. 

“Check,” she said, her tone clipped with pain. 

“Does it hurt?”

“Some.” 

For Brienne, that meant a lot. “Can you talk?”

“Not much.” 

“Good to know,” he said. He watched her driving hesitantly out onto the track, could see the uncertainty in her approach. “I guess that means the time has come for me to tell you the full and complete story of our relationship so far. I've been practicing it for our next big interview.”

She gave a kind of horrified laugh. 

“I have to warn you, this isn't suitable for young ears, and your legs feature prominently. Now, it all started last January, when an incredibly handsome and humble Formula One driver – that's me, in case you were wondering – arrived on the rainy island of Tarth.” 

On the monitor, Brienne picked up speed, tearing into a corner with a renewed aggressiveness that might have been insulting if Jaime hadn't been aiming for exactly that. 

She made top ten in Q1 and Q2, and ended up in P-6 at the end of Q3. A far better starting position than any of them could have hoped for, especially when she pulled into the garage, took off her helmet, and the bandage that had been white when she started was now soaked red.

“Fuck,” Jaime said, grabbing her headgear and shoving it into Pod's waiting hands. “Come with me right now.”

Brienne frowned and touched her cheek, and when she pulled her fingers away, the tips were wet with blood. 

She didn't fight him when he hurried her to the onsite medical director, who took one look at Brienne's face and rushed them back to the small infirmary to re-do the stitches that had come loose from the pressure of the helmet and intense g-forces of driving. 

“Will this happen again?” Jaime asked, holding her hand just like in the ER, watching the movement of the suture needle with the same agonizing slowdown of time as before. 

“You mean if she races tomorrow? Yes. The physical toll of racing is too much for stitches.” 

But Brienne only met Jaime's eyes, determined and sure. 

She looked the same through her helmet the next day when the camera focused on her while she waited for lights out. They'd gotten dispensation from Petyr that Brienne could sit out on any pre-race press and the driver's parade, and Jaime had strong-armed her into relaxing in her driver's room until the last possible minute, though Addam had had to intervene before that when the two of them were staring stubbornly at each other with their arms crossed over their chests in the middle of the garage. 

Though she raced as well as she could, Brienne slipped from the podium to come in P-4, behind Lancel at P-3, and Jaime tugged her slump-shouldered body into his arms at the parc fermé. 

“You were amazing,” he told her, raising his voice enough that she could hear him through the helmet. 

“But the points--”

“Don't matter. You raced today, and everyone saw that. Word gets around fast here, they all know you're driving while injured. Whatever position you got, the respect you've earned more than makes up for it.” 

And indeed while he waited for her just outside of the weigh-in room, he saw Drogo talk quietly to her, examine her bandage, and then look impressed. 

The only person who wouldn't know about Brienne's moral victory, it seemed, was Kevan Lannister himself, who was not at the track at all that day, and who they discovered that night via social media, had been released from Lannister Corp Racing with no explanation other than “poor performance.” Whatever role Jaime's uncle had played in what happened to Brienne, Tywin rewarded him for it in the way he always paid his debts: with personal humiliation. 

“What do you think it means?” Brienne asked him when they were getting ready for bed. 

“That my father is trying to dispose of the evidence. If we find a way to pin this on him besides a game of telephone that would never stand up in court, he can claim he had nothing to do with Kevan and the minute he found out Kevan was involved, he fired him. If we never nail my father to the wall for his crimes, he still gets rid of a weak link in the chain and saves the company money by not having to pay his salary. It makes a truly terrifying amount of sense, if you think of things in the way he does.” 

Brienne sat on the bed and slowly peeled off her shirt, exposing the long black stripe of the bruise down the center of her chest from where the rack had pinned her to the ground. Jaime forced himself not to look away, though his stomach churned seeing what his own father had done to her. 

“I can hear you berating yourself from here,” she said gently, tugging her sports bra up over her head with equal care. “It will heal.” 

“It never should have happened.” He sat down next to her on the bed, hovering his fingers along the line without touching her skin. “I'm worried about the final race. They're still ahead, and if Lancel crashes into you and you both DNF, they'll still be ahead.”

“Then I'll make sure that doesn't happen.”

When Brienne said it, it was easy to believe her, her quiet confidence shining out from every inch of her battered body. He kissed her softly and helped her finish undressing and then climb into bed, and he ran his hand over her back in slow, soothing movements as she drifted to sleep. 

But he was still staring up at the dark ceiling of their room hours later, unable to close his eyes without picturing her car flipping like Aerys' had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne's racing with an injury is modeled very loosely after Niki Lauda coming back to racing after being terribly burned, and bleeding after his first race back. Also DNF = Did Not Finish.


	49. November (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The entirety of Evenstar Racing, from Lollys to Brienne, packed up their things and flew to King's Landing for the final race of the season. They shut down the entire Evenstar campus like it was summer break, not one of them wanting to miss the chance to see if their small, scrappy company could take down the stumbling behemoth that was Lannister Corp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I adjusted the chapter total back down. Same content, I just merged two chapters because they worked better that way. I am WELL AWARE of the irony. This is super-duper-absolutely-one million percent the final chapter total now. I pinky promise. It also means this whole shebang will be done next week, since I'll post twice again. Thanks for coming along on this ride with me.

The return flight to Tarth was quiet. Brienne and Jaime sat in the exit row – where Jaime insisted they get seats every time they could as a concession to not flying first class any longer – and the rest of the team was scattered throughout the cabin, composing at least seventy-five percent of the flight. Elenda was there, too, though she continued to avoid Brienne as she had since they'd left the emergency room. Brienne had been happy to let her over the rest of the weekend, in too much pain and focused too intently on what she had to do. But it was getting more awkward by the minute when they landed and everyone was standing around baggage claim chatting and Elenda held herself off to the side. 

Even Jaime, who typically kept his eyes on the circling luggage like a predatory lion ready to pounce, nudged Brienne and said, “Dinner's gonna be uncomfortable this week.” 

“It wasn't her fault.” 

“Doesn't mean you can't be mad at her. She tricked you to get you down there.” 

“She didn't know it was a trick,” Brienne said quietly. “She was trying to help.” 

Jaime grunted and then surged forward to grab Brienne's luggage as it bumped past on the conveyor belt. “Why does yours always come out first?”

“It's not as full of hair supplies,” she said, grinning as much as she could with the tight pain in her cheek. 

Jaime gave her a bland stare and then saw his own luggage and went for it while Brienne glanced at Elenda again. She was looking down at her phone, and Brienne wondered what Selwyn had told her. Brienne's own phone had been broken under the rack, so Jaime had texted him updates on her behalf, passing along Selwyn's messages of love and, she suspected, hiding his messages of worry. 

They bid everyone goodbye and walked out to where they'd parked the car, although Brienne couldn't help looking back over her shoulder at Elenda, whose luggage was still riding the belt untouched. 

“I should talk to her,” Brienne said. 

“Not tonight. Everybody needs an evening away from each other and a good night's sleep in their own bed.” 

When they got back to their house, they were just starting to unpack when there was a loud knock at the front door. Brienne opened it to her father and before she could even greet him, he took one look at her and covered his mouth with his hand. 

“My baby,” he said. “How are you feeling? Are you resting? I wasn't going to bother you but I wanted to see for myself.” 

“Come in, Dad,” she said. He stepped inside and she gave him a light hug, her muscles and the bruise on her chest still tender. He barely patted her in response, his hand ghosting lightly on her back like he was afraid to even touch her. 

“Is Jaime here?” 

“He's unpacking, you want me to get him?”

“No, I came to see you. I just wanted to be sure you weren't alone.” Selwyn brought his hand up to her face, hovering his fingers over the bandage and then lowering his hand again. “You're all right?” he asked urgently. 

“I'll be fine.” She tried a slightly bigger smile for him, felt the skin pull a little around the fresh stitches. “See, I didn't even get hurt while racing,” she said lightly, and Selwyn glowered at her. 

“That's not funny, Brienne.” 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, contrite. 

“When Elenda called me, I was so angry. Not just at her, but at myself. She told me you were in the hospital and all I could think was if I had gone with you, I could have been there when you needed me.” His eyes filled with unshed tears and Brienne hugged him again. 

“I had Jaime, and Sandor was there, too. The whole team was there to support me.” 

“I know you weren't alone – thank the Mother for that – but that doesn't absolve me.”

“Dad. No one could have known.”

“Just like no one will know if you're going to get hurt while racing someday. It's all a gamble, isn't it? Racing. Life.” He sighed. “When I wasn't overwhelming Jaime with my frantic texts, I realized some things. Like if something's going to happen to you on the track, it will happen whether I'm there or not.”

“I don't blame you for not going,” she said quietly. 

Selwyn's lined face was drawn and sad. “I blame myself, Brienne. Because that part _can_ be helped. If something were to happen, I'd rather be there with you than stuck out here on Tarth, too far away to do anything but pray and worry.”

Brienne searched his eyes, confused. “What are you saying?” 

“I'm saying...” He straightened, pulling his determination around himself. “I want to go to your next race.” 

Brienne could only stare for a long moment. Of all the ways she'd expected her father to respond to her getting injured, coming with her to her races was never even on the list. 

“Are you sure?” she finally asked. “You shouldn't let this one incident force you into something you don't want to do.” 

“Are you going to quit racing?” 

“No,” she said with an apologetic shrug. 

“Then I want to. Galladon would want me to.” He curled his big hand around her head, tucking her hair up under her chin before tugging it a little and letting it go. “I want to see you being great.” 

She hugged him, hard enough it hurt but she didn't care, and his arms were warm and comforting when he wrapped them around her. 

“Thanks, Dad.” 

He kissed the top of her head. “I'm sorry I didn't get to see your first podium finish in person.” 

“Hopefully you'll get to see my next one,” she said, pulling back to grin a little. 

“I believe in you, short stuff. You get your stubbornness from your mother, you know,” he added, his tone long-suffering. “I could never convince her of anything either.” 

“Maybe you're just a pushover.”

“Mm.” He glanced over Brienne's shoulder, and she saw the amused twinkle in his eyes. “You can come out of hiding back there, Jaime.” 

Brienne looked behind her, saw Jaime poke his head around from the hallway looking sheepish. “I didn't want to interrupt, but this isn't the biggest house.” 

“It's all right.” Selwyn squeezed Brienne's upper arm and went over to Jaime, giving him a hug, too. Brienne laughed a little at the surprise on Jaime's face. Her father had always been quick with his embraces, and it still stunned Jaime every time it happened. It was cute, until she thought too long about the reasons behind Jaime's response. “Thank you for taking such good care of our girl,” Selwyn said. 

“It's, uh, my pleasure,” Jaime said when Selwyn released him. Jaime glanced at Brienne, his head dipping a little with embarrassment and a quiet happiness. “I honestly wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but I'm glad to hear you'll be joining us for the final race.”

“I can't wait to introduce you to some of the other drivers,” Brienne added. “You're gonna love Drogo.” 

“Do you think they'll mind if I take a look at their cars?” 

“From a competitive angle, yes, absolutely,” she said. “But we'll see what we can do.” 

Selwyn rubbed his hands together. “I have to admit, I'm looking forward to being back behind the scenes at the track. It's been too long.” 

“It'll be great to have you there.” Brienne chewed on her bottom lip, her teeth tugging and pulling thoughtfully. “Would you mind if I invited Elenda to come, too? Are you mad at her?” 

“Some, but mostly no,” he said, sighing. “I know she didn't do it on purpose.”

“She didn't. I want to talk to her, but she's been avoiding me.” 

“I'm sure she feels terrible. I'm going over to her place tonight, uninvited, since she's avoiding me, too.” 

“Not a fan of direct conflict, I take it.” 

“Well, this is our first fight, and it's a big one.” He stroked his hand over Brienne's hair again, tugged her close to kiss her forehead. “I'm glad you're okay, darling. I'll leave you to get some rest.” Selwyn looked meaningfully at Jaime, and Brienne forced down an embarrassed laugh. 

He took his leave and Jaime came up behind her and gently slid his arms around her waist, holding her with delicate care. “You heard the man,” he said. “Time to get some rest.”

“I'm not tired,” she protested, turning her head to kiss his jaw. 

“No, but you're still injured, and you put your body through a lot this weekend. You don't have to push here, too. I'm not going anywhere.” 

Brienne let herself lean her weight back against him, felt safe and supported in the circle of his arms. She rubbed her finger along the band of her engagement ring and smiled a little. “I know.”

* * *

The next morning, Brienne sent Elenda a text asking her to meet for lunch at House of Fish. It took nearly an hour for Elenda's response, but she agreed. 

When Brienne entered a couple of minutes late, having got stuck in a long-running meeting, she was half-expecting to not see Elenda there at all, but she was sitting at a table by one of the windows, dappled sunlight streaming over the tabletop. When Brienne walked up, Elenda met her eyes with a weak smile, although it disappeared when she focused on the bandage and her gaze flinched away again. 

“Hi,” Brienne said, sitting across from the other woman. “Did you order yet?”

“No, I asked him to wait for you.” 

“Great.” Brienne waved Arryk over, and they chatted idly for a moment, his eyes straying to her bandage but his smile wide and welcoming. Her injury had been reported as an accident, though Jaime had tasked Peck with getting in touch with his contacts to see if there was any footage that could prove differently. 

Once they'd ordered and Arryk had left them with two iced teas, Brienne tried to catch Elenda's eye. “I'm not mad at you for this,” Brienne said abruptly, gesturing at her cheek. “I don't blame you for what Tywin is responsible for.” 

Elenda nodded a little, staring down at her drink. “Thank you,” she said quietly. 

“But I _am_ upset about you tricking me to get me down there in the first place. For lying, and for involving yourself in something that wasn't your business.” 

“It was wrong of me,” Elenda said. “I butted in where I shouldn't have, and I'm so sorry I did.” Elena exhaled and, finally, faced Brienne fully. She looked sick with guilt. “Every time I look at you, I realize what a terrible mistake I made. I won't do anything like that ever again.” 

Brienne took a drink of her tea, studied Elenda over the top of her glass. “I believe you, and I accept your apology.” 

Elenda's brow furrowed a little. “Just like that?” 

“You mean it, don't you?” 

“Of course I do, I just thought you might make me grovel a little more.” Her lips twitched in a small, rueful smile. 

“You seem sincere, and you've been kind so far. I believe your heart was in the right place, even it was _extremely_ misguided. The Lannisters aren't like other families. It's a miracle Jaime is who he is.”

“He does seem rather unique,” Elenda agreed, still hesitant, but the lines in her face had eased. 

“You have no idea.” Arryk brought them small salads and they sat in less-fraught silence as they ate. “Did you work things out with my father?” Brienne eventually asked, keeping her tone casual. 

“He was more upset than you were, but I think we'll be okay.” 

“Good. He's been happier than I've seen him since Gal died. I'd hate for that to end because of this.” 

Elenda's face lit up as she stared down at her salad, rolling a cherry tomato around with her fork. “I'm happy, too,” she said softly, in a tone that Brienne recognized as an echo of what was in her own heart for Jaime. 

“Did he tell you he wants to come to the final race of the season?”

“Yes!” Her head lifted and she beamed at Brienne. “I was so happy when he told me. It will be wonderful for both of you.” 

“It will be. I was wondering, though, if you'd like to come as well?” 

“Truly?”

“Everyone enjoyed meeting you, and I'm sure my dad would love to share the experience.”

“I'd... I'd really like that.” Elenda reached across the table and clasped Brienne's hand. “I see why your father speaks so highly of you. Why your driver friends were so glad when you stopped by, and why your team would follow you anywhere. You've earned all of it, Brienne, just by being you. And I can't wait to be there when you beat Tywin Lannister at his own game.” 

Though she knew what was visible of her face had to be as red as the tomatoes, Brienne lifted her glass of tea in a toast. “I'll drink to that,” she said, and Elenda smiled and they clinked the glasses together with a clear, ringing chime.

* * *

The entirety of Evenstar Racing, from Lollys to Brienne, packed up their things and flew to King's Landing for the final race of the season. They shut down the entire Evenstar campus like it was summer break, not one of them wanting to miss the chance to see if their small, scrappy company could take down the stumbling behemoth that was Lannister Corp. What had really happened to Brienne had been passed through the crew in urgent whispers, until she couldn't walk anywhere without someone pausing to stare proudly at her, to shadow her if she went even a foot away from the buildings. 

It was driving her insane, if the number of times she complained about it to Jaime was any indication. 

“I thought you were kidding about the bathroom thing,” she muttered to him when they were waiting in Storm's End for everyone to take a pee break before boarding the bus to King's Landing. Sandor had been hovering so near Brienne he was like her corporeal shadow.

The situation was starting to drive Jaime a little insane, too. A week and a half out from her injury she was healing well, the bruises almost entirely faded, the pain gone with them. She was scheduled to get her stitches out the next morning in King's Landing, having asked the track's onsite medical officer to oversee. They simply hadn't had the time for her to take before then with all of the preparation for the grand prix. 

But because she was still injured – the thick bandage having at least been downgraded to a slimmer band-aid – Jaime hadn't felt right doing more than just cuddling with her, no matter how much she'd tried to convince him otherwise. 

Two days ago he'd come home and she'd been naked, and Jaime had nearly swallowed his tongue. 

“You're torturing me,” he'd said when she greeted him at the door. 

“You're torturing _me_,” she'd said into his ear. “I'm fine.” 

He'd wanted to take her right there against the door, but all he could see was the band-aid on her cheek, the yellow-brown shadow of the bruise down her pale, freckled chest. Jaime had pressed his forehead to hers and they'd given mirrored sighs of resignation. “I'm sorry,” he'd said, kissing the side of her neck and keeping her body away from his much more eager lower half. “You said you were fine during the race, too, and then there was all that blood. I just want to be sure. You'll see the doctor in a few days and then I promise you I will make it worth the wait.” 

Brienne had laughed low into his shoulder and the caress of it almost undid all his good intentions. “If there was a doctor open right now, I'd pay them triple for a house visit.” 

“Ten times,” he'd said, kissing her once more, quickly, and then stepping away to admire her naked body. “Gods, go get dressed,” he groaned. “While I kick my own ass.” 

On the bus now, Jaime leaned over in the seat and kissed her uninjured cheek. “Just a few more days and then this will all be over, either way.” 

“I hope so,” she said, her teeth scratching at her bottom lip in a way he would have liked to do. 

_Get it together_, he commanded himself. _You're not a teenager._

He felt like one, even though he had been fully capable of going months and months without sex before they were together. Now, every time he caught her scent he wanted to bury his nose in her neck or her waist or her thighs, and breathe deep. 

But even that wasn't what he missed the most. It was afterward, and sometimes just before, or during, when they'd spend time just touching each other, familiarizing themselves with the maps of their bodies, until even the smallest change in topography was a remarkable discovery. Brienne had suffered a fault line, a reminder that for all her determination and bravery and strength, she was still as mortal as anyone, as easily wounded and brought low. If he thought too long on it, it made him sick to his stomach to think she could be killed as easily as Aerys had been. And wouldn't that be some tragic fucking karma, if the gods decided to punish Jaime by taking Brienne? 

He'd much rather distract himself with her taste and her softness, get to see her in those moments when her fragility was safe in his hands and he could take care of her. She was his heart walking out in the world and it killed him he could do so little to protect her. 

He sighed and she reached over and squeezed his knee. “Just a few more hours and then we can at least hide in our hotel room. Maybe test out the bed.” 

Jaime kissed her again, settling his fingertips all around the edges of her band-aid. “Not until these come out. I don't want to hurt you.” 

“It's healing fine, Jaime, you don't have to be so cautious.” 

“Just humor me. Please.” 

Brienne pursed her lips, but she always was a sucker for his politeness. “Fine. But you better not schedule any late meetings tomorrow, because we have time to make up for.” 

“Why, Ms. Tarth, it hasn't even been two weeks. Do try to contain yourself.” She rolled her eyes and slid her hand further up his leg until he grabbed her wrist. “You're full of energy today.” 

“I feel like it's pouring out of me,” she admitted. “I can't tell if I'm nervous or excited or scared or what. One more race.” 

“One more race. But not until Sunday. The only thing you should be thinking about is practice on Friday. Arya thinks she's finally perfected her wing design and she'll want you to run it through its paces.” 

“Practice, right. And what we're going to do tomorrow night.” 

“Yes,” he said, grinning, although it quickly morphed into a frown. “Shit. After the team dinner.”

“Jaime,” she groaned. 

“You were the one who suggested it!”

Sandor climbed onto the bus and glared at the seats. Jaime could see him doing a mental count and was amazed as always at the man's unexpectedly natural instinct to watch out for others. He'd always seemed so aloof working for Lannister Corp, but with Evenstar he was yet another flower blooming under Brienne's patient sunlight. Though the Hound would detest being called a flower; maybe dogwood would be better. Jaime huffed a small laugh, amusing himself, and Brienne eyed him curiously. 

“I'll tell you on the drive,” he assured her, leaning back in his seat as the bus rumbled to a start under their feet. “We have hours to go and I have to distract my insatiable fiancée somehow.” 

He was still laughing about the look on her face as they pulled onto the King's Road for the final leg of their journey.

* * *

The next morning, the stitches came out and the doctor pronounced her healed enough he had no concerns. Jaime and Brienne pressed their cheeks together and stared at her reflection in the mirror. There would be a scar, a few-inch long line of jaggedly cut flesh that was healing well but not without leaving its mark. 

Jaime pulled back and moved his head to the other side and kissed the newly revealed cut tenderly. “I'm glad you're okay,” he told her. “That's all that matters.” 

Brienne brushed her fingertips across the fresh scar and he could tell she was trying to be light when she said, “I think it makes me look badass.” 

“So badass,” he agreed readily. “Very sexy and mysterious. I'm into it.” 

She flushed, the skin all around the scar going pink but the scar itself a pale chasm in the middle. “You're into everything.” 

“As long as it involves you, yes.” 

“I suppose I'm marrying the right man, then, if a facial wound won't scare you off.” 

“You're not giving me a lot of credit here, Brienne,” he said, frowning at her. “Did you really think I'd care what it looked like under the bandage?”

She exhaled slowly, her shoulders easing. “No. _I_ cared. I guess I just assumed you would, too.”

“Is it difficult being that wrong?” 

Brienne snorted, and he watched her smile, the tentative way her injured cheek lifted, like she was out of practice. “I deserved that. But...thank you for not caring.” 

“You're welcome for being a decent human being.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and led her out of the infirmary. “No one who matters is going to care. Except Argella, who will definitely think it makes you look cooler.” 

They sent Argella a photo of the scar later, with Brienne in her racing suit, her head turned slightly to the side and chin up. 

'Fuck yeah!' Argella texted back with a huge string of seemingly random emojis. 'Warrior woman!!!!'

“See?” Jaime said. “You should get that jacket back from Arya and strut around in that. In just that,” he added thoughtfully, considering the image of Brienne's long, muscled body standing naked in their hotel room, the curve of her breasts peeking out from under the Dark Sisters' leather jacket. 

“We still have to make it through dinner,” she said, shaking him a little. 

“Right, yes. Dinner.” Jaime cleared his throat and willed his blood to return to where it belonged. “Let's finish the rest of prep so we can get out of here on time.” 

They did, everyone on the team working together as tightly and well-oiled as their car's high performance engine, and they emerged a few minutes early from the paddock to head back to the bus. Selwyn and Elenda and all of the non-mechanic employees were waiting for them at the hotel, having decided to come down to the track tomorrow so they weren't in the way for Thursday set-up. 

Sandor drove the track crew to dinner himself, and the rest showed up shortly after in the other rented buses. 

Though Brienne had suggested they have a team dinner, it had been Jaime who'd selected the place: the arcade-slash-restaurant where Brienne had taken him after he lost his hand, where she'd admitted she had feelings for him still and hope had shone back in his life like the clouds had parted. 

Lannister Corp had always held their dinners in swanky, expensive restaurants, renting the entire thing out and decorating it in a show of opulence, with too much food and drinks and never enough fun. Jaime didn't want to think about Lannister Corp at all, so he'd made a complete U-turn to bring them here. Their only similarity was that they'd also rented out the entire place, but the staff had hung up paper stars and print-outs of the Evenstar Racing logo all over, and the tables were festooned with blue and gold and white balloons. No one was dressed up and the chatter was high and excited as the team spread out into the arcade to challenge each other to various games. 

Jaime grabbed Brienne's hand and led her straight to the racing game first. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, half-laughing, though he heard her breath catch in surprise when he stopped in front of the game. 

“I'm challenging you to a race,” he said.

Brienne smiled at him, her eyes glowing in the multicolored neon above and all around. Her whole face was soft and sweet in the pink and green and purple lights, and he leaned up to kiss her swiftly. 

“You're going down,” he told her as he slid into one of the plastic bucket chairs. 

She laughed as she climbed into the other one. They both pushed the seats back as far as they could, but it was a tight fit nevertheless. The closeness reminded him of his F1 cockpit, though they'd molded that to fit around his body and it had always felt more like an embrace than this compacted box. For a second, Jaime's natural hand tremored as he reached for the wheel. 

“You're sure about this?” Brienne asked, watching Jaime closely. “You don't have to play a silly racing game.”

“I'm fine,” he insisted. He hit start and gripped the cracked plastic of the wheel. The arcade had set all the games to unlimited play, and he intended to make full use of it. “I think you're just afraid to get beaten at racing by a one-handed man,” he said lightly. 

Brienne mock-glared at him and gripped the wheel with her big hands, her fingers curving in and around in a grip he knew all too well. 

“As long as you're not afraid of getting beaten by a woman,” she taunted. 

Jaime selected his car, some generic green thing with the most speed and worst handling, and then picked a mock track in Sunspear.

“Thought you'd choose Lannisport,” she said.

“Neutral ground seemed safer. You ready, Wrench?”

“So ready. I'm gonna take you down, Lannister.” 

He leaned out of his seat towards her. “I'd let you take me down anytime,” he murmured, delighted by her combination eyeroll and flustered red blush. It was so very Brienne to be so sweet and forceful all at once. 

The countdown on screen started and they were off, Jaime awkwardly shifting with his prosthetic hand, grateful the game controls were simple and loose. Brienne had chosen a car with better handling and less speed, and it was a battle between his zooming recklessness and her patient precision. It was nothing like driving an F1 car in reality, but he couldn't stop smiling as they tore neck-and-neck around a track that took them through the pixelated city of Sunspear. 

The game lasted three laps, and by the end of the third, when Jaime drifted out a little too far in a turn on his bad tires, Brienne inched ahead, beating him by milliseconds at the checkered flag. She threw her arms up in the air and shouted and he laughed with joy. 

“I beat you!” she exclaimed, not bragging, but in surprise. 

“Barely. Go again?” 

“Yes,” she said, quick and bright as a bird. “Let's do it.” 

They raced each other for half an hour, gaining a slowly growing crowd that split between who to root for. Bronn was loud and obnoxious on Jaime's behalf, Arya just as much for Brienne. Jaime lost track of who won how many – though he was certain Brienne won more – and by the time he crossed first again over their last race, he was sweating and starving. 

“That's it for me,” he said, easing out of the seat with a wince. Being crammed into the plastic for that long had been murder on his back. “Let's get some food.” 

The crowd clamored and hurried for the attached restaurant while Brienne stood, too, stretching her long arms up over her head. Her shirt lifted to expose her pale, muscled belly and Jaime brushed his fingertips along it. She shivered at his touch and lowered her arms around his neck. 

“Good game,” she said against his mouth. 

“You too.” Their lips grazed together, not a kiss, but a shared connection. “You're pretty good at this racing business.” 

“You're not bad yourself.” Their smiles were mirrors of each other. 

“Will you two stop making out and get over here?” Bronn shouted at them. “Some of us want to eat.” 

“Start without us,” Jaime called over his shoulder. “I'm busy.” 

“Selwyn wants to make a toast. Don't think he wants to be delayed by whatever you're planning to do with his only daughter.” 

Brienne shut her eyes and rested her forehead against Jaime's. Her body shook with silent laughter in his arms. “Gods, now I definitely can't go in there.” 

“You can hide behind me,” Jaime said, kissing her scarred cheek and turning around. He pulled Brienne against his back, holding her arm around his waist. 

“I'm bigger than you,” she said, her breath hot against his hair. 

“Shhh, you'll give the game away if you keep talking.” 

“You're ridiculous.” 

“Precisely why you love me.” They walk-shuffled to the tables, Brienne still laughing with her head tucked down against the back of his. “Nothing to see here!” Jaime announced brightly, leading her over to where their seats were at the far end of the table. 

“This is far more embarrassing,” she mumbled against his skin. 

“They're all laughing at me, though,” he assured her. And they were, though not maliciously, and even when he directed Brienne down into her chair, the teams' amused gazes stayed on him. 

He took the opportunity of their attention to hold up his water glass. “I just want to thank all of you for being here in King's Landing with us for the final race of this remarkable season,” he said. There was a slight cheer and glasses went up one by one. “This time last year, I couldn't have imagined being here today, and I'm grateful for each and every one of you and the work and time that you've put in to support Evenstar Racing and Brienne's incredible season. Not only have we competed, we've had multiple podium finishes, and for a combination rookie driver _and_ constructor, that's a feat I don't think will ever be topped.” They cheered more loudly that time and he raised his prosthetic for one last moment of quiet. “I hope you're all as proud of yourselves as I am of you, and that you have fun tonight. Then let's bring it for one last race!” 

They applauded and hollered and clanked their forks against their glasses and Jaime took a drink of water and sat down next to Brienne. 

Selwyn stood next and the team hushed. “Thank you, Jaime, for that toast. I wanted to say a little something myself.” He turned to face Jaime directly, lifting his glass in salute. “First, to you.” Jaime felt the smile freeze on his face in shock. “You're a great leader,” Selwyn said. “You inspire all of us. Not because of your hand, but because of your hard work and how always put yourself out there first. You never ask of anyone what you're not willing to do yourself, and you take care of your people. They all see it,” he waved one meaty hand in the team's general direction. “And so do I. Thank you.” 

The team cheered Selwyn's words and Jaime was unable to form either a sarcastic or sincere response to their applause and beaming faces. They didn't look with amusement at him now, but with pride, and the weight of it stunned him. Brienne squeezed his hand, support and anchor both. Jaime could only nod at them all, too moved to do more. 

Selwyn smiled warmly at Brienne. “And Brienne. I believe now that you're doing what you were meant to do. I'm glad I'm here, finally, to see it. We're all behind you, ready to give you all of our love and support. They used to call the lord of Tarth the Evenstar, the guiding light to whom everyone looked. You would have made our ancestors proud. Kick some ass this weekend.” 

The team loved that, and no one seemed interested in saying anything else over the din as finger foods and salads were passed out and around the tables by the staff. 

The dinner was unlike any Jaime had ever been to in his career, the team wandering around and hovering over each other's chairs, every person aware of how integral they all were to what they had done so far, and what they stood to accomplish this weekend. Though they'd already started plans for racing again next year, Jaime knew there would never be another team dinner quite like this one. It was a pinpoint moment in time, all of them together in place and spirit and excitement, bound by the unique journey they'd been on so far, and here at the end of it filled with possibility and hope as wide open as a long straight with no one ahead. 

As the food and drinks diminished, people started to reluctantly droop, and one of the buses loaded up those who were done to take them back to the hotel. Jaime considered taking Brienne back, too, but the night still felt young and promising. 

Besides, they had one other score to settle first. 

“Air hockey?” Jaime asked Brienne, standing from the table. 

She smiled eagerly, rising with him. “I've been waiting all year to beat you at it.” 

“Pretty confident for a woman who didn't even beat me once last time.”

“I've had a pretty good coach,” she said as they took opposite sides of the air hockey table. “Addam's taught me a lot.”

Jaime laughed loud and sharp and full. “Just for that, I'm not going easy on you.” 

He didn't, not that he would have anyway, but he played as hard and smart as he could and he beat her in the first game, 10-8. 

“You're better,” he said, pleased. 

“I'm just getting started,” she said, her voice dropping low and curling around his spine. Jaime blamed that for the reason she beat him the second time, 10-7. 

They monopolized the table for an hour, competing and teasing and gently poking, a small crowd gathering and then dispersing when it because obvious Jaime and Brienne had attention for no one but each other. She was all he cared to focus on: her narrowed, intense eyes; the sweep of her long arms; the flash of her pink tongue when she was concentrating especially hard. 

They were tied at three games apiece when she stood, sweaty and smiling, her cheeks flushed with excitement, and said, “We should get married.” 

He snickered. “I believe I had that idea already, Wrench. You can't steal it like I didn't ask you. I'm sure you remember – you said yes several times. Quite passionately, as I recall.”

Her flush crept down her neck and disappeared beneath her Evenstar Racing t-shirt. “No, I mean right now. There's got to be a sept open all night. Nearly everyone we care about is here, and I'm sure you could text Tyrion and have him meet us.” 

“Wait.” Jaime set his air hockey paddle down, his fingers suddenly weak. “You mean _get married_? Tonight?”

Her face, red and shining from their battling, pulled inward with her frown. “I know it's sudden. I'm sorry. I thought you--”

“Don't you dare finish that statement with anything except 'I thought you wanted to be the one to suggest it,'” he said as he came around the table. Jaime kissed her hard and then met her gaze. “I've wanted to be married to you for months. We just hadn't talked about how either of us imagined a wedding should go. I'm surprised, that's all, not dismayed.”

“We'd just be formalizing what's already true,” she said shyly. “It's a little backwards, but I think tonight counts as a pretty good reception, don't you?” 

“We're not dressed for a wedding.”

“I don't care what we wear. Do you even plan for us to have clothes on long afterward?” 

“Fair point.” He smiled mischievously. “What about cake?”

“There's plenty of cake at the grocery store,” she said, patient and serious, though her lips twitched. 

“Our anniversary will be on or near the racing finale every year.”

“I think that's perfect, don't you?” 

“I do,” he said, feeling the rightness of it at once. “Yes, Brienne Tarth, I do want to marry you. Desperately. Immediately. Whisk me away somewhere and make me your lawfully wedded husband.” 

The smile that split her face was wide and curving like a perfect turn he couldn't wait to spend the rest of his life finding the apex of. “Good,” she said. “I didn't want to have to carry you out of here over my shoulder.” 

“You didn't say that was an option!” he gasped and she threw her head back and laughed, the sound jumping to the high ceiling and falling around them again like a shower of stars. 

They discovered that another busload of Evenstar employees had left while they'd been engaged in their air hockey game, only the pit crew and Arya and a few other engineers remaining. The people that mattered the most, Jaime thought as he scanned the now-mostly empty arcade. 

“We should tell your dad first,” he said, spotting Selwyn talking with Bronn back at the tables. Jaime and Brienne linked hands and walked up to the two men, who halted in their conversation, matching looks of curious wariness on their faces. _We must look like nervous children,_ Jaime thought, biting down his suddenly anxious laughter. 

“Hi, Dad,” Brienne said, nearly squeaking. She cleared her throat and proceeded in her normal, lower register. “Jaime and I are going to get married. Tonight. And we'd like you all to come with us.” 

“Oh,” Selwyn said. And then again: “Oh.” He looked between them. “Are you sure? I was planning on paying for everything, if that's what you're worried about.” 

“For fuck's sake, Selwyn,” Bronn said. “Look at them. Do they look like they care about some fancy ceremony?”

“No. No, I suppose not.” 

Jaime glanced at Brienne, who looked just as shocked as he was at Bronn's casual directness with Selwyn, and Selwyn's easy acceptance of it. Jaime hadn't known they'd even talked to each other before tonight. 

“Then you'll help us?” Brienne asked. “We need to find an open sept, and Jaime wants cake.” 

“We both want cake,” he insisted. 

“Of course, darling.” Selwyn stood and hugged her, hugged Jaime, too, and it felt as warm and familial as the first time, no ounce of dread or regret in the man's firm embrace. Jaime relaxed a little. He'd had lingering worry that Selwyn was disappointed Brienne had ended up with Jaime, that he'd secretly been hoping his daughter would change her mind. “I'm extra glad I'm here for this.” 

“You up for being a best man tonight?” Jaime asked Bronn. 

“I guess I am,” Bronn said, and then he burped and had the decency to look embarrassed. “I would've had a little less to drink if I'd known, though.” 

“Don't worry, we'll keep the ceremony short,” Jaime promised. They split up to alert everyone else: Bronn off to get Pod and the pit crew, Brienne to get Arya and the engineers, Selwyn to find Elenda and Lollys and figure out where the nearest open sept was. Jaime went to Addam, found him leaning against a machine watching Garlan play some sort of fighting game. 

“I've got next,” Addam said when he walked up. 

“This is going to have to be it; there's been an unexpected addition to the evening's agenda.” 

“Go-karts?” Addam asked hopefully. “I still think we should have done go-karts.” 

“Nope. A wedding.” 

Addam straightened, eyes wide. “Holy shit.” 

“Yeah, holy shit,” Jaime said, smiling.

“_Tonight?_”

“As soon as we can get you all to the bus, we're off.” 

“You two,” Addam said, shaking his head with a laugh. “How can I help? I want to be in charge of something.” 

Addam had been understanding when Jaime had talked to him about asking Bronn to be his best man; disappointed, but he knew as well as Jaime that their long estrangement was something they both were still working through. “I just want to be a part of this in some meaningful way,” was all he'd requested, and Jaime had promised he would. 

“Can you get everything organized and make sure everyone gets back to the hotel afterward? I'm not gonna take my wife back on a bus.” 

“Too slow, huh?” 

Jaime snorted, but his friend wasn't wrong. “You're sure you're okay with Bronn as the best man?” he asked quietly. 

Addam clapped him on the shoulder. “It's fine, truly. But that doesn't free you from having to be mine when I eventually get married.” 

“Who'd marry you?” Jaime said, grinning, and Addam laughed. 

“Good fucking question. Come on, let's get you to the sept, brother.” 

On the way, they stopped at the grocery store to get three cakes, settling for what was immediately available – two birthday cakes and a _Congratulations on your new baby!_ one that brought Jaime up short when he saw Brienne holding it. He suddenly imagined them lying in the sun together on Tarth, Brienne visibly pregnant with their child, Jaime running his hand along the swell and feeling a kick against his palm; then a flash of him in the garage holding a daughter with Brienne's blue eyes and big-toothed smile, headphones settled on her perfect ears to protect her. A seed of yearning for all of it planted itself deep in his heart, digging in roots, and Jaime made a mental note to talk to Brienne after the season was done about how she felt about children. For the first time in his life, he realized that if Brienne was willing, he wanted to be a father. That he might be a decent one, too. A father more like Selwyn than Tywin; the kind of man that would be there for his child no matter what. 

“I know it's not exactly right, but it's chocolate,” Brienne said when she showed him the cake just outside of the store. 

“It's perfect,” Jaime said. 

“Just need to assure my dad it's not appropriate right now,” she added, smiling a little. “I don't want him to think this is some sort of hurry-up wedding.” 

“He'd be a good grandfather.” 

“He would,” she said, smiling softly. She bit her lip, and he could tell there was more she wanted to say, but she just kissed Jaime on the cheek and climbed onto the bus. 

They pulled up to the sept that Shireen had ended up finding for them, a small offshoot of the Great Sept of Baelor that was not too far from where Jaime used to live. Though he'd texted Tyrion well before they left – 'Hey little bro,' it had said, 'Getting married in a couple hours and would love to have you there' along with the address – there had been no response, and when they pulled out front there was no sign of his brother. There were, however, a handful of figures waiting for them near the door that morphed into Dacey, Meera, Margaery, and Sansa as they neared. Sansa yelled something back into the sept, and Robb, Jon, and Drogo came out, waving at the bus. 

“What on earth?” Brienne asked, her mouth dropping open. 

“Everyone's in town for the finale, and I thought it would be nice to have your friends here,” Arya explained. Brienne stood up as the bus wheezed to a halt out front and she hugged Arya tightly in the aisle. 

“That was so thoughtful of you,” she said, her voice thick. Eager to avoid getting teary-eyed himself, Jaime hurried out of the bus to greet the newcomers. 

“I can't believe you two were almost going to get married without us,” Dacey said, hugging him. Jaime hugged the other women, too, even the ones he hadn't talked to much, and then shook Robb and Jon's hands. Drogo slapped him on the back so hard he coughed. 

“Smart man,” Drogo said, grinning as proud and fierce as any lion. 

“Occasionally.” Jaime watched Brienne get swarmed by her friends as she stepped off the bus. 

“Alright, everybody, get inside! We've got a wedding to pull off here,” Addam shouted, taking over master of ceremonies as easily as he'd taken over the principal duties they'd given him. Jaime hadn't told Addam yet, but Jaime was stepping down entirely from the principal role next season to hand it all to his friend. It would let Jaime just focus on being a race engineer, and spending a little more time with his wife. 

His wife. 

Jaime couldn't stop smiling as they filtered into the sept. It was a decent size, with plenty of seating for all of them, and the traditional statues of the Seven arranged in a half-circle at the front. Candles were lit all over, giving the space a welcoming, golden glow, the air scented with some incense Jaime couldn't hope to name but wasn't too cloying. He had never spent much time at all in a sept – a few holidays with the family, a poorly decided promo stunt once, the funeral for his mother. Those few septs of his memories had never had this same warmth, like visitors were encouraged to stay and rest awhile, to leave their troubles at the feet of the Seven and walk out renewed. 

A kind-faced septon stood waiting for them in the middle of the statues, his hands folded in front of him. Jaime heard Pia's excited mumbling and the click of her cell phone camera going wild. At least they wouldn't have to worry about photos. 

“Anything you especially want to make sure the ceremony has?” Jaime asked Brienne as they walked down the aisle towards the septon. 

“Just you.”

He took her hand. “I feel the same.” 

“You must be the eager couple,” the septon said when they approached. He looked amused. “I don't usually get pulled out of bed for middle-of-the-night weddings in this neighborhood. I'm Septon Barth.” 

They shook hands all around. “Thanks for doing this for us, Septon.” 

“My pleasure. It looks like you've brought witnesses with you. Do you have any special requests for the ceremony?”

“Nothing overly formal,” Brienne said. “I'd like the hand-binding, though.” She glanced at Jaime and he nodded. “Do you have ribbon for that?” 

“I do,” the Septon said. “Anything else? Do you have someone to give you away?”

“That's me,” Selwyn said, stepping forward. “I'm her father.” 

“Ah!” the Septon said, beaming. “Wonderful. Will you be exchanging cloaks? Some people like the old traditions.” 

“No, no cloaks,” Jaime said, Brienne nodding in agreement. 

“Will you be holding each other's rings or your own?”

They looked at each other in dismay. “Shit,” Jaime said and then he winced. “Sorry, Septon.” 

“Quite all right, son. The Seven don't damn people for cursing. At least I hope not,” he added, winking. 

“I don't have a ring,” Jaime said. “Maybe we could make one out of paper or something?”

“Here.” Selwyn pulled the ring off of his finger and held it out. “This was the ring Brienne's mother put on my hand when we got married,” he told Jaime. The other man shifted on his big feet and looked like he was about to walk naked in front of an entire grand prix. “I'd be honored if you used it as your stand-in here.” He held the ring out, a simple silver band shining in the candlelight. Jaime took it with careful fingers, clasping it tightly in his palm. A single ring, but heavy in his hand with the promise of trust it carried in its curving metal. 

“Thank you,” Jaime said, overwhelmed. Selwyn squeezed his arm and stepped back again while Jaime and Brienne exchanged rings to hold. Brienne lifted her father's up to the light and examined it, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. 

“Then I think we're ready,” Septon Barth said gently. “If everyone could take their places, please.” 

Addam got everyone into position: Arya and Dacey off to Brienne's side on the left, Bronn and himself on Jaime's side on the right. 

“Wait,” Brienne said. “Where's Pod?”

He raised his hand slowly from one of the seats, and Brienne motioned for him to come up. 

“I didn't get a chance to ask you this yet, and you can say no,” she said, keeping her voice down while everyone finished getting in their seats. “But would you like to be my, uh, man of honor?” 

The blush that stole over Pod's round cheeks rivaled anything Jaime had seen on Brienne. “R-r-really?”

Jaime glanced at Brienne, and she was flushed, too, but he knew it was a rush of happiness. “You were the first one to welcome me on the team, even before him,” she said, glancing at Jaime. He shrugged a little, unoffended by the truth. “I'd feel better if you were standing up there with me, just like you've stood with me from the beginning.” 

“Of c-course I will,” Pod said, and he threw his arms around her in a huge, tight hug. Obviously trapped by the strength of his embrace, Brienne returned it as best she could, her hands awkwardly patting his sides, before he let her go. “Th-thank you.” 

“Thank _you_,” she said. Arya and Dacey greeted him warmly when he went to take his place, the three of them a cheerfully unusual group. Though no more unusual than himself and Brienne, he supposed. Podrick turned and gave them two thumbs-up. 

Before Brienne went down the aisle to her father, she gently brushed Jaime's cheek. 

“I'm sorry none of your family will be here,” she said, her voice kind. 

Jaime kissed her, tender and sure. “My family _is_ here.” 

“Pardon me,” the Septon said. “I forgot one thing: do you have a license?”

Jaime and Brienne started blankly at each other. “Crap,” Brienne muttered. 

An official document was not something any of them could magically provide. “I guess we could get one tomorrow and come back?” Jaime said. It was only a day – less than if they fit it in before free practice – but he hated to wait another second. 

“Hold on!” The shout came from the door and the group turned to find Tyrion striding as fast as he could down the aisle. He held out a piece of paper and smirked at his brother. “I knew you'd forget the legal part. Good thing I'm a lawyer,” he said, shoving the freshly printed paper at Jaime. 

Jaime took it, staring at the official seals and signatures, and then gaped at his brother. “How did you--”

“You have your particular skills and I have mine. Shame you wouldn't let me plan your bachelor party, too, but at least I could do this.” He smiled up at Jaime and Jaime dropped to one knee and hugged Tyrion tightly, more glad than he could have imagined to have his brother there. 

“I didn't think you were coming.”

“I went to Cersei's didn't I? You think I'd miss _yours_?”

“Isn't this prime drinking time for you?” 

“It is. I hope you keep that in mind when I don't get you a wedding present later.” 

“This is present enough.” Jaime hugged him again and Tyrion gripped his hands tightly in Jaime's shirt. 

“I love you,” Tyrion whispered in his ear. “I'm happy that you're happy. I wasn't sure any Lannister could be without destroying something else first.” 

“We'll be trendsetters,” Jaime said. “Come stand up with me.” Tyrion pressed his lips together and looked like he was trying not to cry as he stood on Addam's other side. Jaime held the paper out to Septon Barth. “_Now_ we're ready.”

For most of his life, Jaime had thought about marriage in the most abstract of terms. Most Lannisters treated it as a combination of family responsibility and growth opportunity, a way to merge or, more likely, take over someone else's wealth; a way to ensure that the prized family legacy would continue. The only elder Lannister Jaime knew that hadn't been married was his Uncle Gerion, and that he'd mostly seemed to avoid by dying. Even Jaime's indomitable Aunt Genna couldn't outrun the Lannister requirements to carry on the name. 

Jaime had always assumed his racing career would be enough protection from being dragged to the sept for the family good, had backup plans to just outrun his father's grasp should he decide he couldn't wait for his eldest son to do what was required of all true Lannisters. Death would have, at one time, been a preferable alternative. 

What Lannisters seemed to entirely fail at was marrying for love. Now that Jaime was here, watching Brienne walk down the aisle in her jeans and t-shirt, escorted by a father who was happy instead of resigned, surrounded by their friends and family that looked grateful to be there and not pressed into service, Jaime realized what a horror his family had been perpetuating on their children. When he took Brienne's hand in his natural one and they linked their fingers together, Jaime wasn't angry or afraid. He was elated. 

Septon Barth started the ceremony, invoking the Seven with short prayers. When the invocation was complete, he addressed the gathering. 

“It's my pleasure to welcome all of you this evening to the marriage of Brienne and Jaime,” he started. “I've known the two of them all of ten minutes and I can already see why they could not wait another day to be bound.” The group laughed affably, and Jaime could only admit to it with a grin, Brienne's cheeks glowing pink in the dim light. 

Jaime didn't pay much attention to the rest of Septon Barth's welcome, too busy staring at Brienne, her hair loose and slipping past her ear, unable to cease smiling as much as him. The candlelight turned her pale lashes to gold, her eyes to stars. 

“I am hers, and she is mine,” Jaime said when he put the ring he'd bought on her finger, kissing it when it was back in place. 

“I am his, and he is mine,” Brienne said, and slipped Selwyn's too-big ring onto Jaime's finger. They both smiled down at it loose around his knuckle and then back at each other. Several people loudly sniffed – including, he was almost positive, Bronn – but Jaime didn't feel like crying at all. He was burning too bright inside to have space for tears, like the sun drying up the rain. Brienne wasn't crying, either, she was just watching him with the same kind of peace that he felt in his heart. 

The truth that had been missed – or hidden – by too many Lannisters was this: marriage didn't have to be a contract or a business decision or a burden. It could be a promise, instead. That two people would love and protect each other and would fight together against the obstacles before them; that by having their hands bound by a simple white ribbon, they were binding their hearts, able to beat all the more powerfully because they were together. That when Jaime said “I am hers,” it was making public an oath that had been true for so long already. 

“Let it be known that Brienne Tarth and Jaime Lannister are one heart, one flesh, one soul,” Septon Barth said. “And cursed be those who would seek to tear them apart. In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one for eternity.” 

Septon Barth untied the ribbon, and with that, it was done. “Congratulations,” he said, though neither of them was looking at him. “You can kiss now.” 

Before Jaime could move, Brienne pulled him into her, kissing him with a ferocity that was familiar and new all at once, while their friends and family whooped and shouted. 

She broke it off, and he stared at her, dazed by everything she was that was now his to love forever. 

“Hello, husband,” she said, breathless, too. 

The words burned into his heart, branding him willingly. She could say them a thousand times after this moment, but he'd always hear them this way: when they were first spoken with such love it humbled him. Jaime cupped his hands, natural and prosthetic both, gently around her face. “Hello, wife,” he whispered, and he felt the force of her returned joy in his palm.

* * *

Addam had arranged for a ride-share to come pick them up, and by the time Brienne and Jaime had hugged everyone – including Septon Barth, who'd accepted it with a patient smile – their ride back to the hotel was waiting at the curb. 

Brienne led Jaime outside and the group followed, spreading out along the sidewalk and yelling good wishes both thoughtful and dirty. Sandor, who'd avoided all embraces so far, hurried to the car and opened the back door for her. 

“You look happy,” he said to her. 

“I am.” 

“Good. If he ever does something to make you unhappy, the offer to run him over still stands.” 

“The offer to _what_?” Jaime said from behind her, and Brienne squeezed Sandor's forearm. 

“That won't be necessary, but thank you.” 

Sandor grunted but he moved out of the way to let them into the car. Brienne gestured for Jaime to get in and then, on a reckless whim, hugged Sandor quick and hard with one arm before throwing herself into the car, too, Sandor slamming the door shut behind her. It had been like hugging a cranky statue, but before he turned his scowl back to the rest of the group, he paused to give Brienne a quick, small wave goodbye. 

“You two get married?” their driver asked, a bored looking young man with multiple open energy drinks in the console at his side. 

“We did,” Jaime said proudly. He rolled down the window and they both waved to their friends as their driver pulled away from the curb. 

“Cool,” their driver said. “Marriage seems like a load of crap to me, but good for you.” 

They looked at each other and laughed, and Jaime, who hadn't let go of her hand for more than a few seconds since they'd been bound, brought it back up to his lips to kiss each knuckle tenderly. 

“Do you know where we're going?” he asked the driver. 

“Yeah, the red-haired dude gave me the hotel. He paid already, too, and tipped me and said I was supposed to just leave you alone. But no having sex in my car, okay? I just had the seats cleaned.” 

There was barely room for their legs in the sedan, and she didn't want to have their first married sex in the back of a car anyway, especially not with this disdainful young man watching.

Still, Jaime's lips were soft, nibbling at the rough and battered skin of her hands the whole drive, until her entire body was vibrating, eager to feel both them and the scrape of his beard over the rest of her. 

Brienne wished their driver had had a few more energy drinks with the sedate way he drove through the streets of King's Landing back to the hotel. As soon as he pulled into the curving driveway and slowed to a stop, Brienne threw open the back door and escaped, Jaime's delighted chuckle following her. But he easily matched her pace into the hotel and to the elevator bank. They stood near to each other without touching while they waited, which she suspected was safest for both of them. 

They were joined on the elevator by a pair of drunk young men who were only interested in talking about the bars they'd just visited. They were harmless, but by the time Brienne and Jaime exited on their floor, leaving the men making bets on who would throw up first – Brienne suspected the taller one since he was already swaying – she thought she'd jump out of her skin if they didn't get into their room soon. It was a hurried rush down the hall to their room, a fumbling of hotel keys, and Brienne opened the door but Jaime stopped her at the threshold. 

“I could carry you inside,” he offered, and Brienne felt an unexpected frisson of shy want at the idea. Being carried anywhere had seemed impossible since she was a too-tall teenager, and she'd never let herself hope that someone would, someday, literally sweep her off her feet. Jaime could, and he wanted to, and the very idea of it made her heart feel lighter. 

“Not here,” she said. “But later, when we get home, I'd like that. Right now I just want to touch you.” 

Desire was a lightning flash across his features, but he just kissed her hand again and led her inside. A chilled bottle of champagne waited on the table with a box of chocolate-covered strawberries and there were a pair of silk robes on the bed that said 'His' and 'Hers' on the back. Brienne ran the cool fabric through her fingers while Jaime picked up the card on the table. 

“A gift from our friends,” he said. “The 'His' robe is yours, the other one is mine. That had to be Addam's doing.” She had to give Addam credit: he'd come through brilliantly in a short span of time. “I don't want to see you in any clothes right now, though. Will you let me undress you, my love?”

Heat skated through her, a flush over her skin and deep between her legs. “If you'll let me do the same for you,” she said, and Jaime's smile was a small, pleased bow. 

“We'll see if you have the patience for that by the time I'm done,” he murmured, moving towards her and pushing the robes from the bed. He hovered near, an inch away, and kissed the side of her neck. It was gentle, a probing exploration as he left more kisses in a line up her jaw, pausing to nibble at her ear. Brienne ached to touch him, but when she put her hands on his waist he gently put them back at her side. “Not yet,” he whispered. He continued his slow journey over her face, to the cut turning to a scar on her cheek. With a tenderness that made her want to weep, Jaime traced the length of it with his fingertips, his nose, his lips, and then kissed his way down the other side of her neck. Brienne trembled and swayed toward his heat so nearby and still tantalizingly out of reach. 

Jaime took the hem of her shirt in his hand and tucked it into the grip of his prosthetic, then used both hands to pull it up and off of her body, revealing her with a shiver. She brushed her fingers down his arms, raising the hairs there, before settling her hands back at her sides. They repeated the process with her sports bra, and then she was half-naked before him. 

It reminded her of their first day together last summer, when they'd gone back to Jaime's hotel and he'd helped strip her of her wet clothes. She'd been aroused then, too, but nervous and unsure of what was between them, and what was to come. A wedding night in a hotel room in King's Landing, Jaime with one hand and her with her scarred cheek, a brand new constructor and a rookie season to be proud of? None of those things had been even a dream in her future. She'd wanted him then, and loved him, too, but it had been a mere shadow of her feelings for him now. 

Now she knew intimately the taste of the dip above his hipbone, the power of him under her, the sounds he made when she unraveled him with her mouth. Still, the flame of need, the way she yearned to touch him again and again, was as fresh as that first time; stronger, even, driven by the knowledge they'd earned in each other's arms. She knew what it was to love and be loved by Jaime Lannister, and it was all she wanted in this moment. 

But Jaime was taking his time tonight, his mouth exploring her shoulders, the tender inside of her elbows, around the slight swell of her breasts. It was passionately delivered torture, leaving a cool trail behind on her skin and a ravenous fire inside of her. He seemed to lap at every freckle on his way until she could barely stand still, her core clenching and unclenching, her hands grasping air when they wanted only to grasp him. 

“Jaime,” she breathed. “What are you doing?” 

“Meeting my wife,” he said into the curve of her ribs. “There's so much of her, and I want to know all of it.” 

“You already know me,” she said, looking down at him as he dropped to his knees before her. 

He unbuttoned her jeans, unzipped them slowly, and pressed a kiss to the sensitive skin revealed just above the band of her underwear. Brienne tilted her hips towards him and he looked up at her with eyes dark with lust. “I do,” he agreed. “But I want to learn it all again.” 

She ran her hands through his hair, grown shaggier here at the end of the season, and he arched his head into her grip. “Then let's learn together,” she said. “I want to feel you, too.” 

Jaime's exhalation was ragged and hot against her center, but he directed her hands back down. “Almost,” he promised, pulling the rest of her clothes off. He leaned back on his heels and admired her from below, taking a long, slow journey with his devouring stare. 

A year ago, she would have felt uncomfortably exposed standing naked before him. But Jaime had never made her feel anything but appreciated for exactly who she was: the wide span of her thighs, the bunching muscles of her back, her big feet and long fingers. She met his eyes and wasn't embarrassed by the rapturous devotion she saw there. 

He started kissing her again, across her stomach with feather-light touches that had her muscles jumping, his hands skimming down her legs. Brienne wasn't sure she could last through an unhurried exploration of the rest of her body, but it seemed Jaime had reached his limit, too, because he buried his tongue in the curls between her legs and licked and sucked with a focused intensity that overwhelmed her. Brienne gripped his hair with tight fists and he moaned low in his throat, pulling her even nearer. She shook against his face, taking great gulping breaths that ended on cut-off cries of pleasure, and Jaime wrapped his arms around her ass and supported her as she melted into him in a long, white-hot wave. 

Slumped and hunched over his kneeling form, Brienne moved her weak hands to his shoulders, trying to keep them both from toppling over. Jaime panted into her slick inner thigh, kissed her there, too, and then craned his neck back to meet her eyes. His lips and beard were wet, and she tried to sink down into his lap but he held her steady. 

“Jaime,” she whimpered. Even with the rolling aftershocks of her orgasm she wanted him as much as when they'd first entered the room. “_Please_.” 

“Nearly time,” he assured her, standing in a smooth motion, dragging her hands back once more to her sides. “Let me look at you, first. All your pink and red skin, your murderously soft lips, your eyes. Ah, gods. My _wife_,” he whispered, and then kissed her hard and hungry, and she opened to him, matched his need with hers. 

She grabbed his waist this time, determined not to let him put her off again, but he didn't resist when she tugged at his shirt, removing it quickly, barely breaking apart to do so. 

“Afterward,” she said into the heat of his questing mouth, “I'll pay you back in kind. But I need you.”

“Whatever you want, Brienne. Ask it of me and it's yours. I'm yours.” 

“You are,” she said, in low, fierce agreement. She undid his belt and pants, and he shuddered against her when she wrapped her hand around his hard length. “And I'm yours.” She stroked him until he was gasping. It didn't take long. “I want you inside of me, husband,” she told him. Jaime put his arms around her waist and lifted her up and onto the bed, crawling over top of her to lay her down onto the mattress and he did as she commanded in one long, smooth stroke. 

“Say it again,” he begged in her ear. His body was a caress as he thrust into her. 

“My husband,” she murmured. Jaime steadied himself on his prosthetic hand and leaned his forehead against hers. 

“Again.” 

“My husband.” It ended in a wail when he pressed his fingers between their bodies in time with the driving of his hips. 

If he'd demanded it of her again she wasn't sure she could've spoken, lost as she was to the way he filled and expanded her. It had always been a storm between them – sometimes a gentle rain, sometimes a hurricane, but this was summer now; the hope of a difficult winter and an expectant spring finally blooming, ripe and abundant. Brienne cried out as her body went tight against and around him and Jaime called her name when he jerked and poured into her in pulses. 

She held him close when he stilled, when he softened and slipped out of her, and even sated she missed feeling all of him. 

“My husband,” she whispered and he smiled against her neck. 

“I forbid you to call me anything else from now on,” he mumbled. 

“You're just saying that because I've debauched you.” 

He snorted and lifted up a little to look at her. _I'm not wrong_, she thought, taking in his messy hair and swollen lips; the sheen of sweat gracing his shoulders; the flush down his chest. “You should see yourself,” was all he said, smugly pleased, before settling back against her. 

Brienne held him so tightly it was a wonder either of them could breathe. “Weren't you the one that told me 'Jaime' was preferable because it took less syllables?”

“That doesn't sound like me. Now, go to sleep, wife, you've got a big day tomorrow.” 

“Not bigger than today,” she said, kissing his forehead. He nuzzled more deeply into her, his beard tickling her collarbone. They would have these moments for as many years as the gods would grant them, and Brienne would treasure every one. But she knew that when she looked back on her life, she'd pull this day out from among all the rest, and would find it well-loved and burnished in her heart.


	50. November (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all comes down to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want a track to follow along with, I used the British Silverstone GP as the King's Landing circuit map. Here we go.

**Lannister Corp: 189pts  
Evenstar Racing: 183pts**

Brienne woke before her alarm. It was dark in their hotel room still, not even six in the morning yet, but the adrenaline was already coursing through her with the same speed she would aim for later. It was Sunday – race day. The last Grand Prix of the season and their last chance to beat Tywin and win the constructor money he so desperately wanted for himself. To repay him, just a little, for all the pain he had caused. 

She'd barely been able to sleep last night in anticipation and anxious worry, and even with Jaime applying himself with unbridled enthusiasm to relaxing her via orgasm, it had taken another hour before she'd been able to drift off wrapped in his arms. Brienne looked down at him now, sprawled face-down, one arm hanging off of the bed, one leg poking out from under the covers. 

They'd wake up like this every day for the rest of their lives, and it was that thought that settled the anxiety. She wanted to win, but in so many ways she already had. Brienne kissed Jaime's shoulder gently before getting up to get ready for the day. 

She texted Garlan while she did, not sure even he would be up for a run this early, but by the time she was done he'd responded and she only had to wait a few minutes in the lobby for him to come down, his hair still shaggy and unbrushed. 

“Couldn't sleep?” he asked, grinning. 

“Not as much as I should, probably.”

“That's all right, I wasn't sleeping much either,” he said. The elevator behind him opened and Meera stepped out, looking and then very obviously _not_ looking at him. 

She caught sight of Brienne and did a truly comical, stumbling double-take. Brienne barely stopped the laugh from bursting from her chest. 

“Good morning,” she told her friend.

“Hi,” Meera squeaked, still staring so avidly _away_ from Garlan – and he from her – that Brienne could only take pity on them. 

“Do you want to come running with us or do you need to get back to your hotel?” 

“I, uh, should get back.” 

“You're welcome any time,” Brienne said gently. 

Meera straightened and poked Garlan in the side. “See, I told you she'd be fine with it. He said you'd think it was weird.” Garlan smiled sheepishly. “I really do have to get back, though,” Meera continued. “Good luck this weekend! I'm rooting for you. Not over Direwolf, of course.”

“Of course,” Brienne said, grinning. She gave them a minute to say goodbye before they left Meera in the lobby waiting for her ride. Sandor, who she'd also texted, was already waiting for them in a car she'd never seen before. 

“Where'd you get that?” she asked as she did a few quick warm-up squats. 

“Hotel let me borrow it,” he said in the tone of a man who didn't want to be questioned further. She obliged him, and took off on her run with Garlan, Sandor getting into the car to follow them from behind.

The streets of King's Landing were empty, the air fresh and cool. It was supposed to be cloudy today, perhaps a little rain but no promises. Nothing could be promised today except that she would fight her hardest, for Jaime and her team and herself. It drove her as her sneakers pounded the sidewalk, Garlan keeping pace and then falling a step behind until, panting, he said, “Hey, you gotta wait,” and laughed breathlessly when she pulled up. They walked for a while, talking about her car and the race ahead, Sandor hovering just behind them like a watchful shadow. When the hotel was in sight again they jogged the rest of the way in easy silence. 

They shared an elevator back to the floor most of the team was on, and when they parted ways at her door he said, “You've got this, Evenstar,” before giving her a quick wave and hurrying down the hall. That had been a change, too, the nickname that had spread through the garage on Friday and Saturday after the team dinner. She felt awkward wearing it, like a jacket not quite made for her, but maybe someday it would settle more comfortably. 

Still, Brienne was smiling when she stepped inside her room, smiled wider when she saw Jaime hunched over his laptop on the bed, breakfast already waiting on the little table. 

“Good morning, wife,” he said cheerfully, and she bent down and kissed him. “Good run?”

“Garlan couldn't even keep up with me.”

He lifted one eyebrow, smirking at her. “Sounds like he's got a stamina problem.” 

“You couldn't keep up with me either,” she teased him, and he grabbed her arm and pulled her down on top of him on the bed. She fell, laughing, and his arms went tight around her back. 

“I did just fine last night,” he growled into her neck. 

Brienne glanced at the clock. They had plenty of time, a luxury she could get used to. “I think I've forgotten,” she murmured in his ear. “Care to remind me?” 

He did, until she was sweatier from Jaime's caresses than from her run. 

“Eat first or shower first?” he asked when they were curled together in bed, the laptop tilting dangerously near the edge. 

Brienne tugged it back and noticed the screen. “What's that?” 

Jaime tucked her hair behind her ear. “Peck's contacts got back to him. There's video proof that the two goons of Lancel's that we expected were involved in sabotaging the rack.”

“That's good, right?” 

“Yes, although it still doesn't explicitly tie them to my father.” 

“Could we take it to Petyr and get them banned from the race today?” 

“Yes, although it won't matter much for the race itself. Lannister Corp always has back-up personnel. Petyr was my first call after I saw the email. I'm forwarding a clip of it to Melisandre, too, in case she's got an idea for something more.” 

“Why don't you send her the whole thing?”

Jaime traced the line of her scar. “The world doesn't need to see you taken down,” he said quietly. “What I sent is enough.” 

She kissed him sweetly, rubbed the curling, damp hairs on his chest. “I'm not hungry, so I'm going to shower first. You should eat and regain your strength for the day.” 

“I'll let that slide for now, Wrench, but only because we should get going.” 

Brienne didn't move right away though, just kept running circles idly on his chest and thought about the days before and the day ahead while she watched him go from smug to curious. 

“What is it?” he asked finally, always the first to crack any silence between them. _My husband_, she thought, _as reliable and mercurial as the sea_. 

“I think we're going to win,” she said. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

A slow smile lit his face, a mirror of her own eagerness to take on this last challenge. “Me too.”

* * *

The atmosphere on the bus was an electric buzz, leaping from person to person until it filled the empty spaces. Brienne sat in back with the pit crew, sharing a bench seat with Willem. 

They were halfway to the track, Ygritte arguing lightly with Lucion about where the crew should go for the end-of-season party, when Willem tapped her on the shoulder. 

“I never said thank you,” he started, looking awkward. “For giving me a second chance. Especially with Martyn and Lancel and everything.” 

“You were never your brothers,” she assured him. “It's been great to have you on the team.” 

He beamed. “This is my favorite crew I've ever been on. Honestly, it's been a relief not to have Martyn around. He was never great even before everything else.”

“What's he been doing?”

“Sulking, mostly. The family paid a bunch of money to keep him out of jail, but since you, uh, saw him last, he's been even more insufferable. No one wants to deal with him anymore and no one will hire him.” Though Willem's recitation of Martyn's troubles was sunny, he furrowed his brow and stared seriously at her. “I heard it was those two friends of his who hurt you. Locke and Biter.”

“_Biter_?” she asked, half-laughing. “That's a terrible nickname. Why did they call him that?”

“I don't know. He creeped me out so much I never wanted to ask. But I should have known something was up with Martyn when they started hanging out more. And Hoat...” He shook his head. “We worked side-by-side with him all those weeks and none of us knew? It seems impossible to me now. Sometimes I replay all of the times we talked to see if there was something I missed.” 

“Willem,” she said patiently. “How would you ever have guessed he'd do that? There was no way to know. And even if there was, we're all here now.” She looked at Jaime sitting at the front of the bus, laughing with Selwyn. He was so _bright_ these days, like a lantern that had once been hooded and was finally uncovered, bathing everything in his light. She saw Willem turn and look, too. 

“Yeah, I guess we are,” he said. 

“How's your dad?” she asked cautiously. Kevan had disappeared from view, too, after his firing. Brienne had been wondering how far down the hole he'd gone, but there'd never seemed to be a good time to bring it up. 

“I haven't talked to him,” Willem said. “I tried to call him – Lancel, too. I left messages. But in their eyes, I chose sides and it was the wrong one.” 

“I'm sorry,” she said. 

Willem shrugged. “I'd do it again. As long as I've been alive, there's only ever been one Lannister Way, and that was Tywin's. Jaime wasn't the only one bothered by how terrible it was, he's just the only one who's done anything about it. Now there's a different way to be a Lannister. I like it. Besides,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. “You're a Lannister now, too, you know.” 

“I'm a Lannister-Tarth,” she said, but she grinned. 

“Either way, you still get to have the full Aunt Genna Experience.” 

Brienne remembered the Partial Aunt Genna Experience and cringed a little. “Any hints on dealing with that?”

“Hide?” he said, and Brienne laughed. 

When they arrived at the track, they were ushered past cheering crowds festooned in Evenstar Racing gear and colors – and more blue face paint than Brienne had ever seen – into the back parking area. It was a relief not to have to fight through the crowds just to get to the paddock, although as they disembarked the bus, Dacey came running over with as much enthusiasm as any fan. Addam held his arms out and she rushed past him and hugged Brienne tightly first. 

“You are gonna _crush this_,” she said firmly. “I hope you come in first.” 

Brienne laughed and squeezed her in return before they both pulled away. “I don't think your driver would appreciate that.” 

Dacey waved her hand flippantly. “He's had plenty of first place finishes, he'll be fine losing one to you.” 

Brienne looked over her shoulder and saw Addam watching them, his nose wrinkled. “Like Addam?” Brienne said, laughing a little. 

“Exactly.” She grinned mischievously and then turned to Addam. “Hi there.” 

“Oh, so you do remember what I look like,” he said lightly, his eyes twinkling. 

“Sure, I just look for the most self-satisfied redhead in the crowd.” 

Brienne left the two of them to flirt and headed for her dad, who had his arm around Elenda's shoulder and was pointing something out to her on the ground near the nearest building. When Brienne walked up, his whole face was smiling, wide and energized. “Short stuff, look at this!” He pointed to the ground and she saw something scratched into the concrete there. “I meant to show you this yesterday and completely forgot. Those are my initials,” he said proudly, and as she turned her head they solidified into an awkwardly carved ST. 

“You defaced private property? I am astonished.” 

Selwyn beamed at her. “They were re-doing this part of the paddock lane when I was here in F2 and I snuck in one day and got this in before it dried. Can't believe it's still here.” 

“Sounds like we've got a real hooligan on our hands here,” Brienne said, teasing him. “I hope Elenda is a good influence on you.” 

Elenda smiled shyly. She hadn't been nearly as comfortable as before Maidenpool, though she'd loosened up some after the team dinner and wedding. But she'd mostly kept to herself or glued to Selwyn's side. Brienne suspected Jaime's continued coolness towards her didn't help, but Brienne wasn't going to force him to forgive Elenda. That had to be earned between them. 

The team flooded into the paddock and then the mechanics and pit crew continued through to the garage while the rest remained behind. There were screens set up all over to make sure those watching here would be able to see the race, though there'd been talk between Shireen and Lollys and some of the others of staking out ground in one of the grassy areas if the weather held. As Brienne chatted with them in the paddock before heading to the garage herself, she saw a track official approach Jaime and say something quietly. But instead of looking concerned, Jaime burst into a smile and he hurried out with the man. 

When he returned, he was leading a familiar face that Brienne hadn't seen since she'd left King's Landing for Tarth last year. 

“Calon!” The young man gave her a small wave and she walked over and shook his hand. The last time she'd seen him, he'd had spiky pink and green hair. Now it was a bright neon blue. He was wearing shorts, his prosthetic foot clearly visible. “It's good to see you.”

“You, too. Jaime invited me to the race and I'd never been to a Grand Prix before, so I figured why not. I don't know much about racing, though. What's this place?” 

“Kind of a backstage area for the team,” Jaime said. “Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to stay with you, but I know the perfect person for you to hang out with today. Selwyn!” 

Selwyn turned and walked over when Jaime gestured at him. 

“Selwyn, this is my bus buddy Calon. Calon, this is my, uh, father-in-law now, I guess.” The two men shared looks of such similar fondness that Brienne pressed her hand to her chest briefly at the sight. 

“You got married?” Calon said. “Congrats!” He looked at Brienne. “It's to you, right?”

She and Jaime both laughed. “Yes,” she assured him. “He got married to me.”

“Cool.” Calon held out his hand to Selwyn. “Nice to meet you, sir.” 

“Just Selwyn is fine, son.” His hand was almost twice the size of Calon's, and Brienne smiled a little at the way Calon's eyes widened when he noticed it, too. 

“Dad, Calon is our guest, but he's never been to a race before. Can you show him around today?” 

“Absolutely!” Selwyn laid one big hand on Calon's shoulder. “You've come to the right place. Do you want a tour? I can take you through the whole place. We can even get on the track for a few minutes, walk around, if you don't mind?” He glanced at Calon's prosthetic. 

“Yeah that's cool. I brought my walking foot today,” he said, grinning. “I really want to see the car, too. Can I sit in it?” 

“That's gonna have to be an after-the-race thing,” Jaime said. “But yes, later you can definitely sit in the car.” 

“Can I drive it?” Calon asked hopefully. 

“Can you drive at all?”

“Well... no. But if I learned, could I drive it then?”

“No,” Jaime said. “It would be like putting a fish behind the wheel of a monster truck.” 

“I promise, there will be plenty of other neat things to see,” Selwyn assured Calon. “Let's get started by grabbing some food and drink.” 

They walked towards the small buffet table of pre-packaged food everyone jokingly called the Evenstar Cafe, and Brienne poked Jaime in the shoulder. 

“That was really sweet of you to think of him.”

“He kept me company when I was up here without you last year. He's a good kid, and we have a lot in common.” 

“I like seeing you with him,” Brienne said, kissing him on the cheek. “You're good with kids: Calon, Argella, Lyanna.” 

“I'm good with teenagers at least.” 

“Yeah.” She chewed her lip, and promised herself she'd ask him about his thoughts on babies after the race. She wanted to see him with the tiny head of their baby cradled in his strong hands, but now was not the time to find out if he'd ever wanted that, too. “Come on. We've got a lot of work to do before lights out.” 

It was, in many respects, like any other race day: Podrick oversaw the final build of the car, having slid into the Chief Mechanic role without seemingly having noticed he had. Bronn acted as go-between for the engineering and mechanic teams, and was, as always, obsessed with the tires to make sure they were all there and in the best configuration for the race. Arya and her team looked at the outputs from the last two days of runs and made final suggestions, which Podrick and Bronn argued with her over. 

Arya won, as she almost always did. 

Even Jaime was busy preparing for the day, keeping track of what the team was doing, checking weather reports and track conditions, reviewing the pre-race car readouts. Brienne watched them all from the back of the garage, keeping out of the way as they got her car ready for her final run of the year. 

Addam approached her as she stood there, and leaned back against the wall next to her. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked. 

“Ready,” she said. 

“It's all right to be anxious or worried.”

“I'm not,” she said, shrugging, as surprised by it as anyone. “We've done everything we could to get here. Maybe once I'm out there, waiting for lights out, it'll hit me. But right now I just want to get started.” 

“Good,” he said, smiling at her. “That's exactly what I want to hear. Listen, uh,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I don't want to be too sentimental or anything, but it's genuinely been my honor to help train you. After my crash last year, when I knew I wasn't going to be racing again, I had no idea what my future would look like. I thought maybe I'd go see what was available in the lower circuits, or try and be a commentator for some local sports channel. Not a lot of racing jobs for ex-drivers that never won a championship,” he said, smirking. “But this? This is what I wanted to do. To still get to be here on race day, to be a part of a team I can be proud of.” He gestured vaguely. “I know how lucky I am, and I wanted to thank you for that.” 

Brienne felt her chin wobbling, so she just bumped her shoulder into his and stared down at their feet until she could talk. “You're welcome. Thanks for everything you've done for me, too. All those hours in the simulator would've been a chore with anyone else.” 

“You're welcome.” He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the side of her head, in a move that reminded her so much of Galladon she had to close her eyes for a moment. “You're gonna do great today, and we're all proud of you, no matter what happens.” He let her go and exhaled a little shakily. “Okay, enough of that before I get weepy,” he said, grinning a little. “Track walk in a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” 

He squeezed her arm and then walked over to Jaime, and they bent their heads over one of the many reports that were on the screens in front of them. 

Brienne was already in her Nomex, her driver's suit half-unzipped and hanging down at the waist, so she simply watched quietly for another few minutes until Jaime lifted his head and saw her waiting. 

“Track walk?” he mouthed from across the garage. She nodded and they started out: her, Jaime, Addam, and Bronn. It was usually just the four of them, and often one of her favorite parts of race day. While she grounded herself in the asphalt, let her feet feel out the grade of the curves, the other three would take notes in-between the constant stream of friendly insults and jokes. When they first started track walks, Brienne wondered how they got anything done, but she knew now it was the confidence of supremely talented people doing something they loved. 

“It's not my fault,” she heard Jaime saying at one point when she tuned back in from her intense focus on the track. “I didn't force you to try to make that jump.”

“You double-dog-dared me,” Addam said. “A man can't say no to a double-dog-dare.” 

“A smart one can,” Bronn said. 

“I was fifteen, how smart do you think I was?”

“Was there a woman in the pool, too?”

“Yeah,” Addam said, and she snickered to herself at his resigned sigh. “A pretty one.” 

“Horny teenagers are idiots,” Bronn said, and Jaime and Addam made noises of agreement. “One time I thought I was going to mountain bike down the wrong side of Visenya's Hill to impress some girl who I don't think even knew my name.”

“What happened?” Jaime asked, and Brienne paused in her study, curious, too. 

“Oh I didn't do it. I just _thought_ about it,” he said, and the rest of them laughed loud and free, like all they had was this moment to enjoy. 

When they neared the garage again, a familiar voice barreled out. “Where is my new niece-in-law?” Aunt Genna was asking. 

They entered and Genna turned to look at them, her crossed arms barely covering her chest. Brienne waved. “Hi,” she said. 

Genna opened her arms wide and swanned forward, wrapping Brienne in a huge hug. “My favorite niece!” she crowed, and Brienne scrunched her face when Genna kissed her on each cheek. She pulled back, though her hands remained welded to Brienne's upper arms. Genna leaned in and examined the scar closely. “Bastard,” she hissed in a surprisingly deadly tone. “It's madness that they would do this. I don't put it past Tywin, but I always thought Kevan was too spineless to actually try to hurt someone. I can't believe you married into this family after that.” 

“I married _Jaime_,” she said. 

“But you get the rest of us, too, don't you?”

“I suppose.” Brienne glanced at Jaime, who was standing near, a worried line between his brows. “He more than makes up for it, though.” 

“I hope you'll learn to trust me, too,” Genna said, a swirling mix of amusement and gentle firmness. 

Brienne's cheeks heated. “Of course.”

Genna hugged her again, even harder this time, and whispered, “I'm glad he picked you, Brienne.” Then she let Brienne go and turned to Jaime and hugged him with equal force. _The Full Aunt Genna Experience_, Brienne thought, grinning a little. She'd smell like Genna's flower perfume all day, but it was worth it. 

Someone at the edge of the garage cleared their throat and said, “I hope I'm not interrupting.” When Brienne looked over her shoulder, Arthur Dayne was awkwardly standing there, waiting to be noticed. 

“Dayne,” Bronn said coolly. 

Dayne nodded at him. “Bronn. I came through the paddock. Did I see--”

“My wife,” Bronn said firmly, and Dayne smiled a little. 

“I thought so. She looks good.” 

“Aye, she does.” 

Dayne cleared his throat again. “I don't intend to stay, I just wanted to wish Brienne luck.” 

Genna extricated herself from Jaime and gave Dayne a shockingly salacious once-over. “Arthur Dayne,” she said in a tone that sounded like she was taking stock of a choice piece of meat. 

“Indeed,” he said, putting on a charming smile. “I don't think we've met before.” 

“Genna Lannister,” she said, holding out her hand, knuckles up. Dayne wasn't fazed, he just took it and kissed the top and she arched one eyebrow in approval. 

“It's a pleasure, Mrs. Lannister.” 

She waved his words off. “Please, call me _Ms._ Lannister.” 

Jaime looked like he was watching a slow-motion car crash. 

“I need to do a few pre-race media spots,” Brienne said abruptly, and the entire group turned to look at her. She flushed a little but pushed on. “If you wanted to talk,” she explained to Dayne. “I need to get going soon.” 

“Of course. Can I walk you to the media area?” 

“You're sure you want to do that? It's packed out there today.” 

“I am. It'll be good practice since I'm thinking of coming out of retirement. Not to drive, of course, but I've got some other ideas.” 

“That's great,” Brienne said, and she, Dayne, and Jaime started off towards the far end of the paddock lane where the media ops were being held. She grabbed her helmet on the way, since they always wanted photos of drivers holding them in as badass a way as possible. Brienne hadn't figured out yet which pose worked best for her; all of her pre-race photos with her helmet looked silly. She'd have time to figure that out, too, 

Sandor hovered a short distance behind them, diligent as ever in not leaving Brienne's side. She'd had to talk him out of joining them on track walk and only succeeded because there were three other people with her. Sandor considered himself worth two people, minimum. 

“So... Genna, huh?” Dayne asked, looking back at the garage once they were away. Jaime fell into a brief coughing fit. 

It took longer than usual to reach the end of the paddock lane because of Dayne's presence, and by the time they arrived they were trailing a line of eager cameras. The noise from the collected media burst briefly into a roar at the sight of Arthur Dayne with Brienne, and they pivoted as one from Connington, whose turn it had been. 

“Hey!” he shouted indignantly when they all turned away. “What the fuck?” 

It took nearly forty minutes for them to get through the requests for photos and questions, while Connington turned as red as his hair and then gave up entirely, throwing his helmet to the ground and stalking away. His race engineer, Dunsen, grabbed the helmet from where it had rolled under an empty folding chair and hurried after him. 

Eventually Pia came up, tugging at Brienne's arm. “You've got other interviews,” she said. Her face was scrunched in apology but her tone brooked no dissent, so off they went, leaving Dayne behind. 

“Good luck!” he called after them, and Brienne waved in acknowledgement. Pia didn't slow down for a moment. She rushed them to an interview with Formula 1 Magazine, and then to an interview with a local King's Landing radio station, and then popped into a room and yanked Peck out of it. 

“You get five minutes,” she told him, kissing him soundly. 

His ears reddened. “Hi,” he told Brienne and Jaime. “Pia wanted us to do another spread on the two of you now that you're married. Congratulations, by the way.” 

“I'm sorry we couldn't have you there,” Brienne said. 

Peck waved her off. “It's fine. I was trapped at the hotel bar with half of the Direwolf crew, trying to get a good Robb Stark soundbite.” 

“Any luck?”

“Yeah.” He grinned sharply, and Brienne was reminded of the stellar reporter that hid under the innocent young man facade. “Looks like Robb is pushing for more control over his crew hiring for next season. He's frustrated that he missed out on nabbing a certain chief mechanic last year. Anyway, if you two don't mind, I'd just like to ask you a few things about the wedding and being married? Your last couples interview we did is still one of our most popular ever.” 

“Of course,” Jaime said quickly, and Brienne nodded in agreement. She had nothing to hide about her relationship with Jaime anymore. 

“Was it planned for you to get married here in King's Landing before the final race?”

“Not at all,” Brienne said, laughing a little. “Totally spur-of-the-moment.” 

“Whose idea was it?”

“Brienne's,” Jaime said proudly. 

He asked them a series of questions about where it was and what it was like – “Perfect,” they said simultaneously, and then exchanged happy smiles – before Pia came back into their little circle.

“One more question,” she told Peck, “and then we've got to go. Brienne's got a last interview before parade.” 

Peck checked his little notebook carefully, before nodding to himself. “What are your plans for the future? Will there be more Evenstar Racing?” 

“Yes,” Brienne said. “No matter what happens today, we're coming back next season.” 

“Yeah?” Peck's eyes were bright. 

“Not even Tywin Lannister can stop us,” Jaime promised. 

Peck opened his mouth to say something else but Pia jumped in, kissed him quiet, and then dragged Jaime and Brienne off to the last interview. 

She directed them back to the garage and then to Brienne's driver room. When she opened the door, Melisandre was waiting on the couch. The reporter stood when they entered, and gave them an open-mouthed, joyful smile. 

“The unstoppable duo,” she said in her melodious voice. “And I hear a legally wed one now, too.” 

“Yep,” Jaime chirped. 

“But no ring for you, Jaime?”

“Nope,” he said just as cheerfully. They'd given Selwyn back his ring the next morning, both of them afraid it would fall off Jaime's hand and be lost. “It was a bit of a rush affair, so after the season is done we'll pick something out together.” He entwined his fingers with Brienne's. 

“Congratulations to both of you. And to you, especially, Brienne, for making it here.” Her eyes traced the scar on Brienne's cheek. “That wasn't an accident.”

“So you got the footage I sent?” Jaime asked. 

“Yes, but I don't know what we can do with it. At least not against Tywin. I've got the two pit crew already identified, and we'll be able to support any report you file on them. But I know they're not your goal.” 

“Not our final goal, but I want them gone, too,” Jaime said fiercely. 

Melisandre nodded. “My editor will run with it. It's too good of a story to pass up. We just need you to say when, and if there's anything more you can give us.” 

“Let's see what happens today.” 

“Do you think they'll do something else?” Melisandre asked, sounding worried. 

Jaime pursed his lips. “I don't know. It's the last race. Tywin might do anything if Brienne gets in a position to beat them.”

She had, of course, considered that, but it felt different hearing someone else say it, to see the anxious furrow of Melisandre's perfectly styled eyebrows. 

“What are you going to do?” Melisandre asked. There was no sign of her recorder or her phone, and she was taking no notes. “Can I help?”

“I don't know yet. Keep your phone handy, we might need WSN's eyes and ears on whatever goes down.” 

Melisandre looked between them. “Will she be safe driving today?”

“Will any of the drivers?” Brienne asked with a flare of annoyance. “It's no more dangerous for me.” 

“Yes, it is,” Jaime said softly. “You have to watch out for Lancel. I don't know about Ramsay or a few of the others, but Lancel is dangerous specifically to you out there. It's the only place none of us can help.” 

“I can make sure we keep a camera on him at all times,” Melisandre said. “We'll focus on a few of you, offer the feeds to everyone so it's fair. Maybe if you have eyes on him, it can help you direct Brienne.” 

Jaime exhaled. “That would be fantastic. Thank you.” 

“I love this sport,” Melisandre said intensely. “I don't want one arrogant man to ruin it – or to ruin Brienne. I'll have my phone with me all day. Call any time.” She took Brienne's free hand with both of hers and squeezed it tightly. “We're behind you,” she said. 

Brienne nodded. “Hopefully we won't need it.” 

Melisandre looked like that was doubtful. The door opened and Pia poked her head in. 

“Gotta get ready for parade,” she told Brienne. 

“We're done,” Melisandre said. She squeezed Brienne's hand again and then she smiled warmly. “Congratulations, you two. You've come quite a ways from that first interview.” 

“So have you,” Jaime said wryly. Melisandre inclined her head and left the room and Pia gave a two-minute signal before leaving, as well.

“Driver's parade, then weigh-in, then we get the car out on the track,” Jaime said, and Brienne nodded. “You need anything?”

“A minute alone would be good, actually.” 

“Of course.” He kissed her fingers and left her with a smile. 

Brienne took a deep breath and looked around her room. Unlike that first race, it was filled with photos and memorabilia now: a picture of Jaime, Bronn, and Podrick in front of the Titan of Braavos making rude gestures; a small figurine of the lighthouse at Oldtown; a coaster from the bar she, Arya, and the other women had held their first women's night get-together. There was a media shot someone had taken of her and Drogo a few races ago, laughing about something during driver's parade; next to it was a close-up of Brienne sitting in her car with her helmet on and the visor up, her eyes intense and glowing. Another photo showed Jaime and Addam sitting in the gantry and staring avidly at the screen during her first podium finish. There were pictures of her with fans, with the crew, one of her and Robb hatchet-throwing. The framed photo of her dad and Galladon still in its place of honor. 

And everywhere Brienne looked, there were photos of her and Jaime: laughing, arguing, walking the track in the rain, standing side-by-side in the sun. The first black and white one that she'd printed from February, and right next to that, the most recent addition, a hasty gift from Pia: a picture of them in the sept, gazing enraptured at each other over their bound hands. 

She could feel the comforting weight of all of them in her heart, a warm blanket of love and support that she wrapped around herself. Jaime had walked into her father's garage and she had gained an entire world. Brienne pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, took a long, slow breath, and when she lowered her hands, she was ready. 

She touched Galladon's cheek in the photo. “I can do this,” she said, and she imagined she could hear his agreement when she straightened her shoulders and walked out of the room.

* * *

For the final driver's parade of the season, the constructor teams were announced over the loudspeaker two-by-two, allowing the fans in the grandstands to cheer and holler for their favorites. They were ordered by garage, starting with Direwolf, which meant they'd end with her. If they'd done it this way for the first race of the season, Brienne would have probably run and hidden if she hadn't just melted directly into the floor in terrified embarrassment. She wasn't thrilled, now, either, but she saw the Evenstar section, at least as big as Stag Motors and Sunspear, and knew it would be bearable. 

There were still the occasional scattered boos during parades, especially once they were out on the track away from the central fan area, but they were less intense and less frequent and tended to only happen when she was in a solo car. The drivers would be on a single truck together for today's parade, so once she got through this, the rest would be easier. 

“All right, race fans,” the announcer started, “our first team today is the three-years running Constructor Champion, Direwolf, led by this year's World Champion driver, Robb Stark, and his teammate Jon Snow!” 

The chanting for Robb was louder than ever. He waved with both hands to the crowd, his boyish face open and happy. He looked more relaxed than he had all season, but she knew he'd still fight for first today; he'd proven as much by taking yet another pole position during qualifying. Lancel was at P-2, Brienne at P-3 and Jon next to her at P-4. The four of them had been trading positions for weeks now, with Oberyn and Renly occasionally jumping in. They were both in the row behind her today. 

Once Robb and Jon had climbed on the truck, Lancel was announced next, and he strode out with one curt wave. Given the strength of their cheering, his fans acted like he'd stopped and put on a full-length play. Lannister Corp fans were, in less dangerous ways, as obsessed with the legacy of the team as Tywin himself. There would be little that could dissuade them from rooting for their Red & Gold Lions, and, especially in the last two weeks, they'd taken up the mantle of rooting against Evenstar with a ferocity that was occasionally unnerving; the only fans who had booed her in Maidenpool had been wearing Lannister red. Several had shouted blame at her for her own injury, and she'd been relieved that Sandor and Jaime hadn't been in the parade car with her to hear. Pia was still keeping both Brienne and Jaime on social media lockdown, as she had all season, which Brienne was glad for. She couldn't imagine what they were saying online and had no interest in finding out. 

Golden Company received minimal applause, made more noticeable when Sunspear was announced after and their fans went wild, shouting Oberyn's and Theon's names. The two men drank it in, both looking like their fans' adoration was the best part of the day. Knowing them, it wasn't too far from the truth, and Brienne grinned. Dragonfire was next, a team not well-loved in King's Landing, and Viserys in particular had been having a terrible season. He'd never risen to the lofty goals of his own father's storied legacy, and it seemed this year the reality that he never would had finally caught up to him. He waved, but he looked unhappy behind his glossy smile. 

Renly and Loras were announced next and the volume of the cheering swelled as more voices joined the Stag Motors crowd. The two men sauntered out, waving and pointing at their fans, and though they weren't holding hands, they walked so close their bodies kept brushing each other. The next four teams – Griffin, Kraken, Nightfort, and Dothrak – were all greeted with moderate enthusiasm. They were all mid- and back-field teams, and none of their drivers had enough of a personal following to overshadow the superstars from the first group of constructors. Brienne yelled loudly for Drogo when his name was called, and he gave her a grin and a thumbs-up. 

Then she was alone and there was a slight hush as everyone waited for them to introduce her last. It stretched interminably – Brienne wondered for a moment if they'd just not do it at all and what she'd do if that happened – and then the announcer took a breath. “Our last constructor team is Formula One's newest, and includes the only woman to ever get a podium finish in F1 history: Brienne Tarth with Evenstar Racing!” 

She stepped out of the shadows of the overhang they'd gathered under, and as soon as she lifted her hand, the grandstands exploded with noise. The Lannister Corp Racing fans were directly over where the drivers had been exiting, so she heard them first: long, low, deep booing, a few choice curse words, someone shouting that she'd ruined the sport. But as she walked further away from them, the rest of the crowd noise rushed in, the tide returning to cover the slimy creatures that had had their moment in the sun, and soon all she could hear was cheering. The intensity of it shook the air itself and she turned and looked at the crowds, waved both of her hands and saw them waving back – not just the Evenstar fans but so many others, smiling and clapping and rooting for _her_. 

Brienne swallowed hard and waved again and then hurried to the truck, where Drogo pounded her on the back as soon as she climbed onboard. 

“You hear that?” he said, his wide smile white and sun-bright against his copper skin. “They fucking love you.” 

She blushed. “It's strange,” she admitted. 

Renly motioned for her to join them at the front, but she waved him off, feeling more comfortable with Drogo near the back. As the truck rumbled to a start, Renly and Loras shifted nearer. 

“Quite a crowd response you got there,” Renly said as they all waved to the fans. 

“I didn't expect it.” 

“You've got the sympathy vote after your injury,” Loras said, pointing at her cheek. “It doesn't look too bad now.” 

“Can't make an ugly woman uglier anyway,” Connington said from Drogo's other side. He sneered when she leaned over to glare at him. 

“Can't make an asshole any meaner either,” Hyle said from across the way, “but you still keep trying.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Connington muttered, but he turned his back on Brienne to talk to the Nightfort drivers on his other side. 

Hyle just shrugged and turned to wave at the next group of fans. The rest of the parade was pleasant, even fun at points, as they chatted and tried to outdo each other with who got the most and loudest cheers. Lancel hovered near a back corner, occasionally lifting his hand in a mimic of a wave, but barely even looking up. He caught Brienne watching him once, and when she saw the desperation painting his gaunt features with tense, lightning-sharp lines, she felt a pang of worried sympathy, wondered if she should talk to him before the race began. He'd narrowed his eyes and broke away, though, and the urge was gone. 

Jaime was right: the race today would be dangerous. Lancel had the look of a man at the end of a very short rope, hanging over his doom. If she were going to beat him, she'd have to pay attention to where he was on the track.

The truck parked back at the entrance to the pit lane and they all clambered back off again, splitting up to get ready for weigh-in. 

“Hey Tarth!” Robb called out as she started the long trek back to the Evenstar garage at the end. She turned and he gestured at her with his chin. “How's the injury?”

Brienne touched her fingers to the raised ridges of the scar. “It doesn't hurt anymore.” 

“Too bad it kept us from a last challenge.” 

“There'll be plenty of time next year. Brush up on your sailing skills,” she called out as she kept walking backward. He laughed and gave her a thumbs up. 

At the garage, the hustling was more focused now, and her car was connected to a number of hoses and machines, looking like a vehicle's version of the ICU. She had a few minutes before weigh-in, so she crouched down next to it, rubbing her hand along the length of the nose, pressing her fingertips into the halo and then over the intake. After every race the car's body was buffed and shined, and she looked beautiful, and as ready to compete as Brienne was. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jaime said, no mocking in his voice. Of all of them, he understood her connection to her car better than anyone. Even Addam had never seemed to entirely share the same bone-deep bond with his vehicle. “Time for weigh-in.” 

“Will you walk with me?” she asked. 

He smiled, but jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Pod asked if he could go with you today.” 

Brienne stood. “I didn't know he had time. A much better choice,” she said, grinning at Podrick hesitating a few steps away. 

Pod beamed at her, already holding all of her headgear in his hands. They started down the pit lane at an easy gait, though Brienne felt like she could sprint. The anticipation was a distant drumbeat, and with every passing minute it crept closer, beat louder. 

“My car ready?” she asked Pod. 

“Y-yep. She's eager to r-run today.” 

“Me too.”

Pod looked up at her. “Not n-nervous?”

“No,” Brienne said. She flexed her empty hands. “I just want to get to it.”

“I'm g-g-glad we're still working t-together.” 

“So am I.” She grinned down at him. “Thanks for abandoning Sunspear for us.” 

“I d-didn't even hesitate. Wouldn't m-miss this.” 

“Well, even if I can't beat Lancel, at least you got a girlfriend out of it, right?”

“And a f-friend,” he said, nudging her shyly with his elbow. Brienne felt her cheeks heat, and she put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed him briefly. 

“What are your plans for the break?” she asked. 

“Staying on T-Tarth.”

“We should all go do something together.” 

“I'd l-like that. So would Wenda. She's w-wanted t-to meet you.” 

Brienne tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I should ask her to teach me how to shoot a bow. I bet Robb doesn't know how to do that.” 

They chatted the rest of the way to weigh-in, and Podrick waited for her outside while she went through the now-familiar motions. Even the judges smiled when they saw her these days, instead of the suspicion and derision from the beginning. But Brienne's focus was already narrowing as she felt the pull of lights out creeping nearer, as the drums in her head gained in strength. While the other drivers exchanged friendly – and unfriendly – insults, Brienne and Lancel both kept quietly to themselves. 

By the time she and Pod were almost back to the garage, Brienne was falling inside of herself, all the pieces being put into place like a giant puzzle – the repetitions on the simulator, her track study and strategy planning, the feel of the asphalt from the walk earlier – until she could feel the race-to-come in her body. The drum was deep inside her now: the steady, intent beating of her heart. 

Podrick helped her put on her headgear and then handed her her helmet. “W-w-we're behind you, Evenstar,” he said, and she gripped his wrist for a moment in silent thanks. 

“We're gonna head to the paddock, short stuff,” her dad said, coming over. Elenda was a few steps away with Calon, who was staring greedily at the car. They'd have to take him to a go-kart track and give him a chance to test his mettle there. 

Selwyn gave her a long, suffocating hug. When she pulled out of his arms, he opened and closed his mouth, like he was cycling through exactly what to say. Eventually he shrugged his big shoulders and hugged her again. “I love you,” he said quietly. 

Elenda gave her a little wave as they turned to go and Brienne waved back, and then the three of them were gone, too. 

Brienne watched the mechanics disconnect her car from all of the hoses and machines, and make the final preparations. Arya sauntered over, standing next to her with her arms folded over her chest. 

“Best wing of the season,” Arya said. “But we've only got the one in this configuration, so try not to crash.” 

Brienne huffed a laugh. “I'll do my best.” Bronn pointed at her, telling her it was time to get in, and Brienne looked down at Arya. “Thanks for everything.” 

“You're welcome,” Arya said. “I just hope it's enough.” 

Once Brienne was settled into the cockpit, her helmet on and hands gripping the wheel, Bronn knelt down next to her and laid his hand on her arm. 

“We're with you every second, Chief,” he said. She covered his hand with her own, and then he stood and tapped her on the helmet as he always did, her signal to move out. 

Brienne drove the car out to the grid, parking at her spot at P-3, and then climbed back out to let the crew do their final adjustments. She stood silently next to Jaime, not sure what there was even left to say at this point. Instead she reached for his hand, and they gripped each other tightly, waiting for the five-minute warning. 

The thrumming expectation quieted with his hand in hers; her eye in the storm. Brienne didn't need any more well-wishes or shows of support. She didn't need jokes or heartfelt embraces. She only needed the car in front of her and the man at her side. 

_I can do this_.

When the time warning came over the speakers, Jaime tugged up the sleeve of her driver suit and kissed the inside of her pale wrist, his lips moving with words he didn't speak aloud. Then he pulled from his pocket the white ribbon they'd been bound with at their wedding, and wrapped it around her wrist while she watched, his natural and prosthetic hands working together in harmony, swift but gentle. Only once the ribbon had been secured, her Nomex sleeve and driver suit pulled back over top of it, did he let her go. They didn't say a word as they smiled at each other. 

Brienne got safely buckled back into the cockpit and slid her visor down. The steering wheel was a welcome weight in her hands. 

“Radio check,” Jaime said. His voice filled her helmet, a low, warm caress that settled comfortably at the base of her neck. 

“I hear you.” 

The cars started the last formation lap of the season, weaving back and forth behind the safety car to keep their tires warmed up. It would be a gray-sky drive, for which she was grateful. It would still be hot in the car, but not as bad as a sunshine race, and there wouldn't be glare to worry about. 

“Are you ready for this?” Jaime asked her, as light and easy as he always did, like this race was nothing special. 

“More ready than I've ever been,” she said. 

“I believe in you, Wrench, though it sounds like you don't need it.” She could hear his smile in his words. 

“I don't, but it helps anyway.” 

The cars pulled back into their spots on the grid, rumbling and impatient. “Hey, Jaime?” she said as the lights started to click on one at a time. 

He gave a startled, curious hum. She never talked during countdown, but she needed to say this today, for her and for him and because it had been true for so long and she wanted the world to know. The fourth light clicked on. Then the fifth. There was a long moment of hesitation and the world went quiet around her. 

“I love you,” she breathed, and the lights went out. 

The field leapt forward like a single beast, almost immediately scattering into its disparate parts as everyone jockeyed and swerved for early positions on the short straight before heading into the esse starting with turn one. 

The Direwolf engines, as always, excelled at the first burst of acceleration, and Jon's car pulled ahead of hers down the straight, but he was still the more conservative braker he'd always been, and they ended up tire-to-tire down the esse. Lancel was even with Robb ahead of them, and whatever was happening behind, Brienne didn't care about. All that mattered through sector one and into sector two was not losing her position this early to Jon. 

She was able to use her DRS to get ahead of him down the straight out of turn five, and then she put him behind her around the hairpin right corner of turn seven. Robb had gotten ahead of Lancel, too, and they were one-two-three all through the rest of lap one. 

The King's Landing Grand Prix was fifty-two laps. This was only the beginning of a long and difficult race. 

It was possible to make it through with just one pit stop, and that was the strategy they were going for today. Jaime had talked her endlessly through tire management techniques all season, and they'd gone over them again this week: stay on the track, don't lock your wheels, accelerate smoothly. Addam had repeated it like a mantra from above when she was on the simulator. Even Bronn, when they were talking about which tires to use, had insisted on it. 

All the work and study and annoyance when they reminded her – over and over and over – had seeped into her bones and she hovered close to the kerbs without bumping over them. She braked late, but not abruptly. And she accelerated with a steady, smooth pressure that felt slow but helped the grip of her tires down the straight. 

The first laps were critical for tire management; she'd seen too many drivers go hard when the tires were fresh, only to open them up to early blistering and marbling later on. Brienne knew her patience was her greatest benefit here, especially when Jon started to creep up on her in lap three. He was driving harder than usual, and she was happy to let him. Even on a gray day, tires were sensitive, and he'd have to pit long before she would. 

He did, at lap fifteen, ceding his third place position back to her for good. 

But Lancel was still ahead of her at P-2, and third wouldn't be good enough. If he kept up his relentless pace, she'd have to catch up to him and get him behind her somehow. She had no idea how she was going to do that, but she had thirty-five laps to figure it out. 

Though she crept closer over the next ten laps, Lancel's car hovered just out of reach and Brienne started accelerating harder, taking turns with less finesse and more speed. 

“What's up?” Jaime asked her at lap twenty-three. 

“Driving,” she said through gritted teeth. The scar on her cheek itched terribly but there was nothing to be done about it. 

“You're getting sloppy. Still over half a race to go.” 

“I want to undercut him.” 

“No,” Jaime said simply. 

“But--”

“No. We'll have you box when he does. You can beat him when we get the new tires on your car.”

“What if I can't?” she said, holding on through the sharp left and then almost immediate right of turns sixteen and seventeen. Her wheels bumped over the kerb when she hit the apex wrong. 

“You absolutely can. Remember your strengths. Success just comes down to being stubborn, and no one's more stubborn than you.” 

Brienne laughed once, and some of her anxiety escaped with it. Her approach on turn eighteen was picture perfect. 

So instead of trying for an undercut, Brienne pitted when Lancel did at lap twenty-six, and her crew were flashes of lightning all around her, tires on and off so quickly she'd only taken one deep calming breath before they were shouting “Go go go go!” at her and she was off again. 

“Lancel went to hards,” Jaime told her, and she nodded as she followed the red Lannister Corp car back onto the track, much closer now but still behind. 

Lancel had started on softs; changing to his mandatory second tires meant he was also planning on one pit stop. Not surprising, but good to confirm. Her team had decided to go the other way: hards first, then a switch to softs for the endgame. 

As she settled back into rhythm for the second half of the Grand Prix, Brienne slowly became aware of a different race being run around them. She and Lancel had pulled back into the pack when they'd exited the pit lane, and it should have been simple enough to weave their way through the other teams' cars, the other drivers following the standard courtesy of not interfering with lead cars when they'd already been lapped. But the Nightfort team seemed eager to stay in her way, while letting Lancel past. With the pair taking up the track side-by-side, there was no place for her to go when Lancel pulled further ahead. She was stuck, and furious, until they caught up to Drogo and the Dothrak driver turned in aggressively on Slynt's car, forcing him to crash or move in, giving Brienne an outside passing lane that she took advantage of when he chose to move. 

Connington was ahead next and Lancel overtook him easily, but as she pulled near Ron, his car lurched towards hers, forcing her to brake to avoid a collision. 

“What the fuck?” Brienne gasped. 

“I should have broken his jaw last year,” Jaime said darkly. “What the hell is Hunt doing?” 

Brienne – focused on trying to find a space that would be safe to overtake Connington – had missed Hyle's car ahead of Ron's, but his red brake light came on in the middle of the straight and Ron swerved to the left to avoid hitting him. Brienne went to the right, and was able to speed past Connington before he could recover. Hyle gave her a small thumbs-up as she zoomed past. 

Even Loras held off Alyn, the Golden Company number two, from blocking her progress when she knew Alyn had let Lancel by. 

“Wrench,” Jaime said quietly. 

“I know.”

They weren't helping her win, but they were preventing her from losing, and she tucked those feelings into her heart, too, with Jaime's love and her team's belief and her father's support. 

As they came out of the turn to start lap thirty-seven, Brienne had regained her P-3 spot, with Lancel and Robb not too far ahead. But ahead of Robb was Ramsay Bolton, driving slowly in the middle of the lane. 

“I don't trust Bolton,” Jaime said just as Brienne realized what was happening. 

“His car's not having problems.”

Time slowed down as she hurtled towards Ramsay, not sure what else to do but press forward. If she slowed, she'd lose what advantage she'd gained on Lancel, but Ramsay couldn't be trusted if she tried to pass and there was no one in front of her who'd understand what was happening and work the field to just give her the chance. 

At least, that was what she assumed, until she saw Robb drifting his car Ramsay's way, easing the other man out of the middle of the lane. But as they approached the esse, Ramsay over-corrected abruptly, and his wing slammed into Robb's tires, sending both of them spinning out onto the apron, leaving long strips of tire and huge chunks of their cars on the track. 

“Shit!” Brienne yelped, swerving to avoid what looked like half of Ramsay's wing, before steadying her car again and making it into the esse herself. 

The yellow flag light lit up on her steering wheel. “They're bringing the safety car out,” Jaime said. “Too much garbage on the track.” 

Ahead, Lancel was already slowing, and Brienne caught up to him easily as the silver safety car pulled in front, emergency lights flashing on the roof. 

“Is Robb okay?” she worried aloud. 

“Yeah, but he's out of the race. In good news: so is Ramsay.”

“How many laps behind the safety car?” she asked Jaime. 

“Ten.”

That meant somewhere around lap forty-seven they'd be released to finish the race, and then she'd have five laps to find a way to beat Lancel. 

She had known going in that with her fourth-place showing in Maidenpool, even if she'd come in second and Lancel in third, it wouldn't have been enough for them to beat Lannister Corp. She'd needed to beat Lancel by two places just to tie, three to win. He was inconsistent enough that on Friday, Brienne had held onto the hope it could be done, though when he'd qualified at P-2 on Saturday she knew it would make everything that much harder. But all weekend, whether it was because of the stunning happiness from her whirlwind marriage to Jaime or the constant waves of support from everyone around her, Brienne had still believed it was all possible. 

Until this moment, when she'd have to do something no woman had ever done before. 

She drove quietly behind Lancel and the safety car, weaving occasionally to keep her tire temps up. 

“How's it all feeling?” Jaime asked. 

“The tires are rough. I think I should get a fresh set.”

“We're not bringing you in.”

“What if Lancel goes in?”

“Even better because that will put him behind you. You can do this.”

Brienne shook her head, hard. “I can't.” 

“You've done it before.” 

“Not like this. I've never gotten first.”

“Don't focus on getting first. Just focus on beating Lancel. When the safety car releases you, keep as close as you can to his car and then use your DRS on that straight out of sector one.” 

“But he'll just use his in sector three, and his car is faster.” Panic was a steel band around her chest, tightening slowly. 

“It is,” Jaime agreed. “But you're a better driver. You can keep him behind you.” 

“For five laps?”

“For fifty laps if you needed to.” 

“Jaime--”

“Hey,” he said, cutting her off gently. “I know you. I know how you drive. I know you can do this.” 

“How do you know?” she asked quietly. 

“Because you're motherfucking Brienne Lannister-Tarth,” he said, pride and love and joy in his voice, and she hadn't expected him to say that, but it was somehow exactly what she needed. 

“I am,” she said, re-gripping the wheel with steady hands and a smile. 

“Damn right you are.”

After one last lap, the safety car pulled to the side and she and Lancel took off for the last five laps of the season. 

Arya and the engineers had spent all year building and fine-tuning and building again, turning her car into a marvel of technology. Bronn and Podrick had kept the mechanics and the pit crew on top of every change, had tweaked and tested every piece, until her car keened with throaty confidence around the track. Addam had taught her everything he knew, helped her hone what she was good at and work on what she wasn't. Jaime had been at her side at every turn, as reassuring and unyielding as a lighthouse in a storm, her guide even when everything looked darkest. 

They had all helped her get here, and now it was her turn to pull them the rest of the way. 

Raindrops started to fall in a gentle patter against the halo and her helmet. Over the headset, Jaime made a soft, pleased noise that echoed perfectly the sudden calm in her heart. 

With four laps to go, Brienne pulled nearer to Lancel. His tires had better endurance, but they were slower, and as the track turned slick in the rain, his car started to slow, too. Brienne had driven through storms all her life. This one wouldn't hold her back. 

With one lap left, Brienne pressed ahead at the first straight, and they careened side-by-side through turn after turn, Lancel creeping near but Brienne never giving an inch. Whatever orders Tywin had given the other drivers, they didn't seem to extend to his own. 

She was a tenth of a second, maybe less, ahead of him as they entered the last, long straight. When they pulled out of the turn at the end of the speed trap, Lancel rode the kerb hard on the inside, urging his nose ahead of hers again, and then she overtook him slightly in the sharp back-and-forth of turns sixteen and seventeen. 

_One more turn_, she thought, the world a pinpoint of just the track immediately ahead. Even Lancel was no more than a shadow at her side, though he was so close she could reach out and touch his tires. The checkered flag waved in her future; everything she'd done remained behind. Lancel's tires brushed hers coming out of the final turn, her car wobbling at the contact. 

“You've got this,” Jaime murmured in her ear, and she brought her car back under control, accelerated, and it felt like the track itself lifted her up and forward, a giant rolling wave that pushed the nose of her car a tire-length ahead of Lancel's just before they passed under the checkered flag whipping wildly in the rain, a black-and-white celebration of the impossible thing she had just done.

* * *

The noise in the Evenstar garage when Brienne had gotten her first podium finish had been astonishing. It was still one of the things Jaime remembered most about that day, the way it had pummeled his chest like a physical force as it rolled out and around with the crew. But that had been nothing compared to what was happening now, as Brienne nudged ahead of Lancel to come in first in King's Landing. 

The pit lane was pandemonium, the crew swarming out and up into the gantry and climbing onto every square inch of the pit wall to flail and holler at Brienne's car as she drove by, waving in excitement back at them. Addam was screaming nonsense words at Jaime's side, alternating between slamming his fist happily into the counter and shaking Jaime with unbridled excitement. Bronn was losing his godsdamned mind with Podrick, the two men bouncing around in circles, hugging each other, until Jaime was certain they'd both just fall over from dizziness. Arya had managed to almost entirely scale the pit wall fence and was waving her own shirt over her head, something Jaime probably should be worried about, but he didn't care about anything except getting to the parc fermé to be there the moment Brienne arrived. 

He threw his headset down and took off at a run for the parking area, weaving through the crowds that tried to stop and congratulate him on his driver's first P-1. Jaime shrugged them all off with a hurried “Thanks!” and he managed to make it to the parking area as he saw Brienne driving slowly down the lane towards him. 

Jaime gulped in air while he waited, memorizing the sight of her gleaming blue car as it rolled to a stop in front of the tall sign with a bright white '1' on top. The cameras were chattering madly, a ceaseless clicking that faded into white noise as Brienne climbed out of her car and held her long arms up to the sky in victory. She looked as tall and powerful as the Titan of Braavos, but when she pulled off her helmet and balaclava she was still Brienne, and his heart felt ten sizes too big for his body at the sight of her enormous smile and the deep blue sky of her eyes. Her thin hair was pressed in a sweaty tangle to her head from the effort. 

Everyone was calling her name, but she focused on him, even as the rest of the crew rushed up, still shouting and cheering loud enough to make the cars shudder. 

Brienne walked over and they stood a foot apart, staring at each other as the cameras caught every second. 

“I knew you could do it,” Jaime said casually, like his heart wasn't trying to escape between his ribs and throw itself at her feet. 

“Jaime,” she said softly, curling her fingers into his hair. “_We_ did it.” 

“Yeah,” he said and she kissed him hard before pulling back. Her cheeks glowed with rain and sweat and tears. 

At the same time, they became aware of a sudden lull in the crowd when Tywin Lannister pushed his way through the throng to meet Lancel getting out of his car. Even the camera lenses dipped, not because Tywin was yelling, but just from the murderous look on his face as he swept his gaze over Lancel and then to Jaime and Brienne. Jaime tensed, ready to leap the barrier and protect her with his life if he needed to, but Tywin just turned on his heel and stalked for the cooldown room, Lancel following slowly behind. 

Jaime did push past the barrier then, and Brienne grabbed his hand as they walked after the other Lannisters. Selwyn shoved his way forward and fell into step behind them, and though Jaime considered telling the man to stay behind, he could see from the furious twist of his lined face that it would be a fool's errand. 

“What's Tywin going to do?” Brienne asked quietly just before they stepped inside. 

“I don't know.” Jaime pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick text. “But we need to be ready for anything.” 

Stepping into the cooldown room was like jumping into an icy lake, all the excitement and joy of the raucous crowds outside immediately hushed and frozen in here. Tywin looked angry enough to burst every blood vessel in his body, and when the media started filtering in for their standard post-race routine, he went red in the face. 

“Get your fucking cameras out of here!” he roared, loud and fierce as a lion. The camera crews looked around uncertainly. They knew their jobs, the places they were supposed to be allowed, but everyone also knew what it meant to cross Tywin Lannister. Since her support of Evenstar Racing, Melisandre had not been allowed a single question of any Lannister Corp employees, and had been kept out of certain media-only events led by the company. These journalists had no interest in risking their own access, and they escaped before Tywin could yell again, leaving the room to the teams. 

Renly and his race engineer, Edric, entered, hesitating in the doorway. “Are we interrupting something?” he asked, flashing an easy grin into the tension.

“Yes,” Tywin bit off. “Get out of here.” 

“I came in third, Tywin,” Renly said, shutting the door behind him. “I deserve to be here.” 

“Will you feel the same when it gets out that you and Loras have been fucking in the paddock at night?”

Behind Jaime, Selwyn gasped. And even though Tywin had used the same tactics against Jaime and Brienne, it was still awful to hear him lay it out before Renly, who went so unearthly pale Jaime was worried he was about to faint. 

“How...” Renly whispered. 

“I have dirt on everyone in this fucking sport,” Tywin hissed. “A man has to protect himself and his legacy from everyone who wants to bring them down. You're all just too stupid to realize it.” 

“And no one has dirt on you, is that it?” Jaime asked, shifting so he was in Tywin's direct line of sight. 

“That's right.” He looked over Jaime's shoulder to Renly again. “Leave,” he commanded, and Renly did, hurrying back out of the door with Edric on his heels. Before the door could close all the way, a small hand pushed it open, and Tyrion entered with a grimly sardonic smile. 

“Glad I didn't miss the family reunion,” he said. Jaime noted he had his phone at his side, and when Tyrion looked his way, his little brother gave a small, slight nod of his head. 

“What are _you_ doing here?” Tywin sneered. “The only woman in this room is already getting fucked by your brother and I don't think he's inclined to share.”

Jaime felt his jaw twitch, but he breathed in slow through his nose. “The only person getting fucked here is you, Father. We beat you in the constructor standings, which means we get all the money and you get nothing. We won.” 

Tywin trembled, the air around him swirling with his rage. “I will take this from you. There was contact--”

“That Lancel initiated,” Jaime said. “Though I expect you encouraged more than that from him. I wonder that he waited until the very end to do it. Seems like they have a slightly better father-son relationship than we do.” Jaime tilted his head and took his cousin in: the hunched shoulders, the darting, desperate eyes. With Melisandre's feed, Jaime had had a front-row seat to Lancel's drive, and sometime during the race, Lancel had decided not to sabotage Brienne. Even at the end, when their wheels had been a hairsbreadth apart, he'd only nudged into Brienne's car. An act that had ultimately been what had cost him the win, unable as he was to get his own car back under control before Brienne had hers obeying her strong hands. 

But Jaime knew that hadn't been Tywin's ultimate plan, and Tywin spun and dipped his face into Lancel's now. “You couldn't even beat a bloody woman!” he shouted, spit hitting Lance's cheek. “The entire company will collapse into bankruptcy because _you_ couldn't follow a simple order.”

“I couldn't do it,” Lancel rasped. “It was too dangerous. What if--”

“What if _what_? I made my own son crash and lose his fucking hand – do you think I care what would have happened to you?”

All the air left Jaime's body at Tywin's admission, leaving him deflated, but his father didn't even seem to notice. Brienne went rigid with furious hurt at Jaime's side, and Selwyn briefly pressed his hand to the back of Jaime's shoulder, like he was lending Jaime some of his strength. 

“It's a relief to hear you admit it.” Jaime's voice carried in the heavy silence, and Tywin jerked his head back around to face him. 

“Makes you feel better, then, to know you were right all along?”

“Oddly, yes.” He stepped forward and Brienne started to move, too, but Jaime touched his prosthetic fingers to her arm and she stilled. She had done her part. This was his. 

“Glad I could do one good thing for you, then,” Tywin said, all sarcasm and bitterness. 

“Don't sell yourself short, Father. You were also half the reason I was born.” 

“It's too bad you were never the son I wanted. You could have saved Lannister Corp.” 

Jaime's hand twitched at his side. “That wasn't on me. That was your job. If you'd have gotten over your own godsdamned pride--”

“_My_ pride? What about you? So consumed with being the best, with salvaging your useless reputation after Aerys. You could have helped me then, but I couldn't trust you to do what needed to be done.”

Between every barked sentence, the room was so quiet it swallowed any echoes, the silence an oppressive weight that made Jaime want to scream.

“You never even asked me to help,” he said, his voice barely controlled. 

“Would you have a thrown a race if I asked you to?” Jaime's throat closed with fury and Tywin scoffed. “I can see the answer on your face. Winning fairly always meant too much to you, no matter what everyone else thought. And then you couldn't even lose when I needed you to. I had to bring on Hoat as insurance in case everything else failed.”

“'Everything else' being what you forced Brienne to do.” Just behind him, she folded her arms across her chest. 

“Yes,” Tywin snapped. 

“Crashing my car was like using a gun to open a paper bag.” 

“I wasn't lying the other day in Maidenpool: I never intended for you to get seriously hurt.” 

“Just a little hurt, then. Much better.” 

“Dammit, Jaime. When will you understand that everything I have ever done has been for you?”

“Don't,” Jaime said, and the word dropped between them like a boulder, cracking the silence into brittle shards. “This was never about me. You knew I could have died, just like you knew Lancel could have today, too, or Brienne.” And Jaime didn't dare let himself linger on that thought too long or what little rein he had on his fierce anger would snap entirely. “But you never cared enough to let that stop you. Because this was always about not being your father.” 

“He was a laughingstock,” Tywin said, and for the first time he looked around the room, as though anyone there would understand. 

Tyrion shuffled forward to stand next to Jaime. “What a terrible life,” he said, his voice droll, but Jaime could hear the wounds buried deep. “Much worse than illegally betting millions of dollars against your own son, causing him to crash, trying to injure his wife enough to keep her from racing against you, and then excommunicating your own brother from the family when it failed. And those are just the highlights. We don't have time to delve into all the bullshit you've thrown at me.” 

“Do you want an apology?” Tywin asked darkly. “Is that why you're here, Tyrion? To admit I did all those things and then act like I'm sorry for not letting the family legacy die? Because I won't. I did do them, every last one, and I would do them all again. Except next time, I wouldn't fail.” His cold-eyed gaze skated to Brienne and just as Jaime was ready to leap forward and beat the very idea of Tywin doing worse to Brienne from his evil mind, Tyrion stepped in front of Jaime. 

“That's _not_ why I'm here, Father. Well,” he held up his phone. “Only partially. Melisandre,” Tyrion continued, raising his voice a little. “Did you get all that?”

“Every last word,” she said over the phone. “Recorded and already sent off to a secure location.” 

“Fantastic. Remind me to send you the other little recordings I've made over the year, too, will you?”

“Of course. I look forward to hearing from you further.” 

Tyrion firmly pressed the disconnect button on his phone and smiled innocently up at his father. “Now, if you're still offering, I will take that apology.” 

Tywin was completely still, even his chest barely moving as he stared at Tyrion with pure, wild hatred. “What have you done?” he finally asked, his voice a jagged rasp. 

“Been the son that you wanted,” Tyrion said, and he tucked his phone in his pocket and turned to look up at Jaime. “Consider this your actual wedding gift. If you don't need me any longer, I'm afraid I can't stay one more minute here with him. It's like looking in a revolting mirror, and I need some fresh air.” 

Jaime squeezed Tyrion's shoulder and nodded, and his brother escaped out the door. The crowd noise rushed in to fill the vacuum of the cooldown room, and then abruptly cut off when the door closed once more. 

Tywin's jaw worked furiously as he stared around the room, resting his gaze, finally, on Jaime. “You've ruined us.” 

“Good,” Jaime said quietly. “It's the best thing I'll ever do.” 

“No,” Selwyn boomed from behind him, and the air shimmered with the soft rage in that single word. He moved to stand next to Jaime, bracketing him in-between his big frame and Brienne's on the other side. “This isn't your fault at all,” he told Jaime firmly. “It's his.” Selwyn glared at Tywin, and Jaime's father lifted his chin, but there was an uncertainty in his stance that hadn't been there before. “I lost my son when he was still a teenager,” Selwyn told him. “Do you know what I would give to have him back? Yet here you are, with a man like this as your son and you treat him the way that you do. It's despicable. But what you've cast off, Tywin Lannister, we've picked up. And we're richer for it.” 

Jaime let out a slow, shuddering breath, felt Brienne take his hand and hold it tight. 

“I won't thank you,” Selywn went on, “because you don't deserve gratitude for being a terrible father. But I hope you think of this when you're rotting away in jail, and that every day from this to your last is filled with regret and shame.” 

Then he put his back to Tywin and gripped Jaime's shoulder in one big hand. “I expect Baelish and the others will be waiting anxiously to hear what's happening in here. And I won't let that man strip my daughter of her first P-1 podium experience.” 

Jaime could only nod, not trusting himself to speak, and started following Selwyn out of the room. He was only a step away when he realized Brienne hadn't turned with him. 

She'd moved a step or two nearer to Jaime's father, instead, her broad shoulders pulled back, standing as tall and unyielding as a mountain as she faced Tywin down. “You will never touch us again,” she told him, the words delivered like a command and a condemnation at once. 

“I didn't think you were the gloating type,” Tywin said. 

“I'm not, but I could make an exception for you,” she said. “I won't, though. You're not worth it. You're not worth anything.” Her voice was colder than Jaime had ever heard it; even when she'd been at her most furious with him, there had never been the utter disdain in her biting tone. 

Though when she, too, turned her back on Tywin, her eyes were alive with fury and triumph and a fierce, deep protectiveness that struck Jaime's heart like the rich, deep tolling of a bell. He reached for her, and they held each other's hands as they started for the door. 

“Wait,” Lancel said, hurrying after them. “Jaime, I'm... I'm sorry. I know my dad was part of what happened, but I didn't know he would do what he did.” Lancel's gaze flickered briefly to Brienne, and then bounced away again like it hurt to look at her. 

“How much did you know?” Jaime managed to ask. 

“Not all of it, I swear.”

“But enough.” 

Lancel blanched. Without the driving fire that Tywin had stoked in him, Lancel looked like a washed out doll, all limp joints and ragged edges. 

Brienne touched Lancel's arm briefly. “You didn't do all that he wanted,” she said. “That's something.” 

Jaime didn't understand how she had such an endless well of patient forgiveness, but he knew he was just as lucky as anyone that she did or they wouldn't be here, and that was unthinkable. Jaime kissed the palm of her hand and they walked out into the breaking sunlight together.

* * *

It took nearly an hour before they made it to the podium. 

Baelish was waiting just outside the door with Tyrion and Melisandre, and it was clear from the IAF President's face that he'd heard enough of what Melisandre had recorded that he couldn't remain a bystander any longer. 

“Go back to your garage and wait for me there,” Petyr ordered them before he pushed into the cooldown room with some of the track security. “And don't talk to _anyone_.” 

For once they did as he said, ignoring every shouted question from both the media and other teams as the entire Evenstar crew retreated to their garage. From there they continued back to the paddock and shut the rest of the world out. Genna was waiting inside, her face grim and sharp as a cliffside. 

“Are you all right?” she asked Jaime and he honestly didn't know how to answer that, so he just shrugged and kept going to the conference room. Brienne followed, but everyone else stayed behind, gathering around as Selwyn started telling the others vaguely what had happened. 

When Brienne closed the door of the conference room, Jaime exhaled loudly and leaned on the table, his two disparate hands holding him up. Brienne rubbed her hand up and down his back. 

“I don't know what to say,” she said after a minute. 

“I don't either,” he admitted with a soft laugh. “I feel like I'm in a very vivid dream.” 

“At least we're in it together,” she said, carding her fingers through his hair. 

“Hey,” he said, straightening and tugging the neck of her driver's suit. “You came in first! We didn't even get to celebrate that.” 

She didn't look excited, she looked worried. “I never did the post-race weigh-in. Do you think they'll disqualify me?”

“No. I won't let them.” 

“You're not your father,” she said, caressing his cheek. 

He wasn't, but he felt like he could have been. That perhaps he could be, if driven to the right extreme. For Tywin, it had been the family legacy. For Jaime, it was her.

“You know, Willem said something interesting to me this morning.” She unzipped her driver suit, let it hang around her waist, the Nomex shirt clinging tightly to her muscled arms, the fabric of the white ribbon poking out at her wrist. Jaime tried to focus, but the motion and bulge of her biceps was distracting. “He said you were giving the family a new way to be a Lannister. That it doesn't just have to be Tywin's way or nothing.” 

“Willem said that?” Jaime asked, trailing one finger over her shoulder. 

“He did. He's right, too. Whatever happens from here, I'm not ashamed to have Lannister in my name, because I share it with you.” 

A shared name. A name they could both be proud of, for themselves and their children. 

“I want to have a baby with you,” Jaime blurted, and then winced when Brienne's mouth dropped open. “Sorry, I didn't intend to have this conversation this way. Or now.” Or possibly at all, given the shock in her big blue eyes. “Let's just forget I said anything.” 

“No, hold on, I just need a minute. It's been kind of a big day.” Brienne gave a snorting half-laugh at her own understatement and shook her head. “I'm not against the idea. But I want to race.”

“I didn't mean immediately,” Jaime said. “I just mean at some point. In our future. If you want to.”

“I do,” she said. “If _you_ want to.” She bit her lip, and her eyes were shy but happy. Jaime pictured her holding a baby, looking down at their child with that same serene joy on her face, and his body felt too tight to contain all the love that bloomed inside him. 

“I do.” 

“Our child will be a Lannister, too,” she said. 

“A Lannister-Tarth,” Jaime clarified, stepping nearer to kiss the tip of her crooked nose. “The best of both.” 

“A Lannister-Tarth,” she repeated. “Watch out, world.”

* * *

Eventually, Petyr returned and let Brienne weigh in in the Evenstar garage, ignoring all of their questions about what had happened with Tywin except to say he was being dealt with and they had a podium to attend. 

When they made it back, the media was still there, and all the teams, and even thousands upon thousands of fans, everyone curious about the unexplained delay. Brienne dragged Jaime and her father up the stairs with her to the podium, ignoring their feeble protests. She stepped out onto the landing to find Renly with the #3 cap on his head, and Lancel nowhere to be seen. 

She wasn't entirely surprised at his absence, but she wondered how it was going to be explained away. Baelish did not seem like a man interested in airing the dirty laundry of Formula One, no matter how much of it there was. Brienne didn't see how this would be a stain he could cover, but they would watch him to ensure that he didn't try. They'd fought too hard, been through too much, to let Tywin Lannister walk because Baelish was afraid. 

Petyr took the stage and tapped the microphone, a loud snap of sound that quieted the crowds. 

“Good afternoon, everyone,” he began. “What a remarkable final race that was!” The fans cheered loudly in the grandstand. “Thank you for your patience while we handled some internal matters. Due to extenuating circumstances, our second-place driver can't be up here today, but we didn't want to deny the chance to celebrate for the first woman to win a Grand Prix.” 

That set everyone off: the fans to the sides and the crowd of crew and drivers below. The Evenstar team was deafening, but Brienne could see many of the others cheering nearly as loudly. Drogo was whooping and jumping so much she was afraid he'd hurt himself by colliding with the nearby wall. 

Petyr awarded Renly his trophy and champagne first, and then he approached her. She took the offered trophy, examining it with careful hands. Brienne could feel the weight of all the expectations she'd been carrying slide free, melting into the trophy that was solid in her palms. She thought of the young fans back at winter testing in Sunspear, of the elderly biker women they'd met at Maidenpool. Of Arya and Dacey and Lyanna Mormont. Of the women who had tried before her, and the ones who'd never even had a chance. This trophy was for all of them. 

Brienne handed the trophy to her father to hold so her hands were free for the champagne. He thrust it up into the air and waved it all around while the team laughed and hollered in approval. 

She picked up the enormous bottle at her feet and shook it hard, turning to look for Jaime. But while she'd been busy with the trophy, he'd grabbed Lancel's unused bottle and he turned it on her now with a reckless grin. She shrieked and sprayed him in return, and then as one they spun to drench Selwyn, who laughed uproariously, trying and failing to shield himself. Renly joined in, too, until everyone up on the platform – including a grimacing Petyr – was soaked to the skin. 

The clouds had dissipated, leaving blue skies above, and the sun shone down on them as they waved to the crowd. Jaime was at the podium edge, trading ridiculous shouts back and forth with the Evenstar crew. Every golden inch of him glowed in the late afternoon sunlight, his face suffused with an astonishing joy. 

“Jaime,” Brienne said, and when he looked over, she caught her breath. Champagne dripped down and off the edge of his strong jaw; his cheeks were flushed; his eyes were as green as the meadows of Tarth, and more home to her than even Tarth could ever be. Everyone was watching them, tens of thousands of fans and crew here, hundreds of thousands at their homes and bars around the world. All of them waiting to see what she would do. “Come kiss me,” she called, holding out her open hand to the man she would have given all of it up for, but who she knew would never ask it of her. 

Jaime was at her side in a moment, and he picked her up and swung her around and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her while the crowd chanted her name.

* * *

**Final Results:  
** Lannister Corp: 207 pts  
Evenstar Racing: 208 pts 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much longer author's note coming at the end of the next, final chapter, but: we did it y'all. _Thank you_.


	51. Epilogue – LanniStar Racing: January (Two Years Later)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His wife. Two years since they'd gotten married and he still broke into a stupid grin every time he even thought the words. He hoped that would never change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a promo video referenced below for Tarth. Imagine it looks [something like this](https://www.redbull.com/int-en/redbullracing/projects/dutch-road-trip-port-to-zandvoort).

_I don't need you to save me  
My heart's filled with gasoline  
You already forgave me_

* * *

It was raining, because rain on Tarth in January was as reliable as Brienne waking up too early on race day or Selwyn finding some youngster to adopt and show around at every Grand Prix he attended. But it wasn't raining much, a mist, really, and Jaime was currently dry inside the office he'd shared with Brienne, packing up the last of his things before heading home to his wife. His wife. Two years since they'd gotten married and he still broke into a stupid grin every time he even thought the words. He hoped that would never change. 

Though the King's Landing ceremony had included all of their friends, Aunt Genna had been miffed at missing it, as had a surprising number of other Lannisters and, unexpectedly, Brienne's Uncle Endrew. To placate them all, they'd celebrated with a huge reception on Tarth in August the following year. Jaime was fairly certain every islander made an appearance as well, whether they were explicitly invited or not, to eat and drink and dance at the open field at the top of Evenfall Hill. 

It had been a hell of a party. 

He'd miss returning to Tarth and its people after every race this year, but the new LanniStar headquarters in King's Landing were finally theirs and fully remodeled, and they were moving their base to save money and travel time during the season. Jaime looked around the empty bungalow with a nostalgic smile. Brienne had earned her first world championship from these offices last year, while they'd also won their final lawsuit giving them ownership of what once had been Lannister Corp, and set up their karting program for underprivileged kids in what free time they'd had left.

They'd kept themselves busy, to say the least, but not busy enough to prevent Brienne from taking the championship from Robb in a nail-biter at King's Landing. She and Jaime hadn't left their hotel room for three days afterward, much to Pia's – and every journalist in the city's – dismay. And then, in what might have been the highlight of Jaime's month, they'd broken in his old Lannister Corp office in the way he'd wanted to when he and Brienne had first met. Loose-limbed and ravaged by his mouth, Brienne had looked every bit as glorious naked in the chair behind his desk as he'd imagined. 

Jaime collected his box, peered out of the window at the clouds overhead, and hurried through the clinging damp to his car. They were leaving tomorrow, and he wanted to spend the last quiet day of the pre-season curled up with Brienne in front of the fireplace in their bedroom. 

The road from what had once been Evenstar Racing headquarters to the home he and Brienne had had built was a well-traveled one. On his way he passed by the beach where they'd spent all of yesterday filming a ridiculous promo for the first Formula One race ever to be held at Evenfall track later this season. Brienne and Loras had driven their cars from last season along the winding curves – which they'd had to get special approval to shut down for filming – and Jaime had met them coming the other way on his motorcycle, flying in-between their wheels as they'd roared by. They'd been practicing that stunt all week, and it had been thrilling to nail it on the first take. 

“Don't take this as some sort of sign you should start a new career,” Brienne had told him sternly last night when he hadn't stopped talking about it over dinner at House of Fish. 

“I bet there's a lot of call for a one-handed stuntman,” Jaime had said. “Think of all the fake amputation scenes I could film.” 

At least Renly had laughed. Jaime had grown no fonder of the man through their forced time together, but he hadn't grown any _less_ fond of him either, and that had to be a win. But Loras was a good number two driver for Evenstar, and now that he and Renly were open about their relationship, he'd become less snippy and more snarky. Jaime could handle snarky. 

“Seems like you might have a new opening for race engineer soon,” Renly had teased Brienne. “Could be interesting.”

“Are you thinking of finding a new career?” Jaime'd asked, and Renly had shrugged a little. 

“I'm racing this season for sure, but I don't know about next. Stag Motors hasn't extended my contract yet, and I'm not sure I'd take it even if they did. If I did retire, that would give me more time with my boyfriend,” he'd said, squeezing Loras' hand. “Maybe I'll hang around the LanniStar garages and give advice.” 

Jaime's face must have betrayed how much he didn't like that idea, because Renly had laughed again, loud and unoffended. 

Nearing home, Jaime's phone rang, and he cast a quick glance at who it was before putting the call on the in-car speaker. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure, little brother?” 

“Our father, unfortunately.” 

Jaime sighed. “What's he doing now?”

“He's appealing the decision – again.”

“Can he even do that anymore?” 

“No, but do you think that'll stop him from trying?” Tyrion's voice was dryly amused. That was a notable improvement from how he'd sounded this time last year, when he'd discovered they were being dragged back into court again by Tywin from the white-collar jail their father was in. 

After King's Landing, when Tywin had admitted everything and Melisandre had saved it all on tape, Jaime had assumed justice would move swiftly. It had instead moved like a car with four flat tires. But just as Brienne had once pulled her car in to pit with two wheels and two sparking rims, Tywin Lannister had also been brought in, spitting even more flames than Brienne's car had. Tywin had spent the year and a half since fighting at shadows only he could see, Cersei trying to help him from the outside, still desperate for his adoration. 

But ultimately he'd even lost that, if the signal waves she'd started sending vaguely in their direction were any indication. Jaime had been redirecting her to Aunt Genna, in the hopes that Genna might be able to connect with his sister in a way none of the rest of them could. 

The idea of Genna and Cersei teaming up on anything was, admittedly, a little terrifying, but he trusted Genna's mostly-good-heartedness would win out. 

He was ignoring all rumors about her and Arthur Dayne with everything he had in the meantime. They were always together for work – Genna as the new LanniStar CEO and Dayne as their celebrity sponsor – and Jaime chose to believe that was all it was. 

“How's Lancel?” he asked Tyrion now, grasping for anything to distract him from pondering whether his aunt was having an affair with his idol. 

“I think the guilt is finally wearing off. He actually complained to me about Aunt Dorna getting on his nerves, and he gave up on Martyn months ago. Plus Janei is very much a teenager now and he has no idea what to do with that.” 

Jaime snorted. He couldn't imagine Lancel taking care of a misbehaving puppy, let alone his sixteen-year old sister Janei. But with Kevan serving out his own sentence for his part in Tywin's crimes, Dorna had demanded Lancel take on the responsibilities of caring for the family in Kevan's stead. It had seemed to steady their cousin for a while, but it appeared he was reaching the end of his rope. 

Given Willem was the only good offshoot of that part of the Lannister family tree, Jaime didn't blame him. 

“Based on my experience with Argella and Lyanna, my advice is to just let her figure out who she is and try to keep her from hacking into the International Space Station.”

“Which one did that?” Tyrion asked, amused. 

“You know it was Argella. Lyanna would've tried to commandeer a space shuttle.”

“Fair point.” There was the clink of a glass in the background and Jaime raised an eyebrow at the time. 

“Starting early today. Everything okay up there?” 

“Yes, fine. Drinking helps me read all of these boring legal documents. I've got to make sure all the contracts are in order before Monday.” 

“You have mine, right?” Jaime asked, grinning. 

Tyrion made a sound of annoyed disgust. “Yes.”

“And you got my suggested changes?”

“Yes.”

“And...?”

“I am not demanding you be called 'the Evenstar's Consort' in news scrawls no matter how many times you ask.”

Jaime laughed in delight. “It was worth it just to hear you say it like that,” he said, still snickering. The road was nearing its end and their house loomed near, windows on both floors glowing warm and welcoming. “Hey, I'm almost home. I'll see you at the offices on Monday?” 

“You will. Tell Brienne I said hi. And, uh, give her my love.” 

“I will,” Jaime said, smiling softly as he hung up. Tyrion and Brienne had been working on their relationship for the last two years, which mostly had meant Tyrion was trying to not be a selfish asshole all the time and Brienne was being patient with him. They'd found common ground in their physical differences, and once Tyrion had realized his sister-in-law could be trusted not to make fun of him, he'd unfolded his tightly wrapped heart for her, in the same way Brienne's quiet kindness had encouraged so many others. It wasn't that she forced people to change, it was more that she showed them what was possible if they did, and she believed that they could even when it looked doubtful from inside. 

Seven knew that was what she'd done for Jaime. 

He parked in front of their house and when he opened the car door he was greeted first by the sea: the tang of salt air in his nose, the wind curling through his hair, the waves a constant and soothing call from below. Jaime loved the view and the sound, and sometimes he would linger to appreciate it, but today he wanted to see Brienne more. The singular, glorious woman who looked like every hope he had ever had. She was waiting inside for him, and he didn't want to spend a second more without her.

* * *

Brienne had spent the day doing her own packing, walking around their house and trying to remind herself it was worth it to be in King's Landing during the season. It would be; last season had been exhausting between the travel and the extra work, and neither of those would be letting up this year. Besides, they'd be coming back in June for the Tarth Grand Prix, and they already had plans to spend the entire summer here. Jaime had been as eager to promise that as she'd been to ask it. 

Still, it was hard to leave the home they'd worked so hard to make their own. 

They'd made sure the house had what they both wanted – an exercise that had taken up a surprising amount of time during their first year of marriage. But as she wandered now to gather up the last clothes and personal items they'd need in King's Landing, she knew every last minute of effort had been worth it. There was a decently-sized kitchen and a huge dining area so they could fit their friends and family for weekly dinners. They had multiple bathrooms and a combined study and guestroom for when Tyrion came to visit. The garage was half-gym, and there was a room above that had a simulator for Brienne to practice when she wanted, though she'd found Jaime there, too, grinning as he'd driven around the familiar tracks. He'd initially struggled with the buttons on the steering wheel, so they'd had a different one made for him that could be swapped out and programmed for his dominant left-hand use. He'd never race for real again, but they enjoyed challenging each other on the virtual tracks. He was as talented and smart as he ever was, and she didn't always win. 

Then there was the bedroom that currently held a stack of unpacked boxes, and one day would be the perfect size for a nursery, with windows that faced the dawn. 

When they'd first moved into the house, they'd left this room empty for a few days, until one morning when they'd stood watching the sun rise, Jaime behind her with his chin on her shoulder and his arms around her waist.

“When do you think we'll get started?” he'd asked. 

“Started on what?”

“On having kids.” 

“It's kids plural now, is it?” Brienne had said, her tone light. 

“If you want to. We both liked at least one of our siblings.”

She'd covered Jaime's hand on her stomach with her own. “A couple more years,” she'd mused, and he'd nodded. “Then I'll be ready.”

“That works. In the meantime, we can have some practice sessions,” he'd murmured, and they'd broken in that room the same way they'd broken in every other room in their home. The hardwood hadn't been comfortable, but it had been worth it to see Jaime painted rose and gold in the early morning sunlight. 

Mostly when they were home, though, they spent time in their bedroom. It had been specially made, a huge space that was only partially filled by the king-sized bed. There was a closet big enough for both of their clothes, and an enormous bay window that faced the sea. The bed was tucked into the alcove of that window, and they'd make love slowly during a storm, wildly in the sunlight. At night they would curl around each other and count the stars.

It was Brienne's favorite spot in the world when Jaime was there, and they'd spent hours talking and laughing and arguing in it, discussing their past and planning for their future. 

She was in their room now, turning on the gas fireplace that Jaime had insisted on – “With all that damp,” he'd said, “we'll want to warm ourselves” – when she heard the front door open and close. 

“I'm home, Wrench,” Jaime called, and Brienne turned up the heat. “Where are you?”

“Bedroom.” His footsteps were quick, and he must have taken the stairs two at a time because he hurried in moments later, dropping his damp jacket on the overstuffed armchair. They'd broken that in, too, in several different and very pleasurable ways. 

“Get your packing done?” she asked as he paused to balance himself on the end of the bed and tug off his socks. 

“Yep. You?”

Brienne gestured at the open luggage by the closet. “Just need you to pick a few things for yourself and then we're ready.” 

“Later,” he promised, pulling her near to kiss her soundly. She smiled into his mouth. 

“I missed you,” she said. 

“It's only been a few hours.”

Brienne shoved him gently. “You always tell me that!” she protested, laughing a little. 

“And what do you always tell me when I do?”

He had her there. She tugged him back by the front of his shirt. “You're very annoying,” she said as she kissed all along his jaw, tasting the rain. 

“You're very--” he gasped a little when she sucked an enthusiastic mark on his neck and scratched her nails down his chest. “Stubborn,” he finished on a small, pleased exhale. 

“It's a good thing I am or I wouldn't stand a chance against Bronn.” 

Bronn had happily ceded his Chief Mechanic role entirely to Podrick, especially when they'd made him Race Strategist so he could argue about tires as much as he wanted. Which, it turned out, was an astonishing amount. 

Jaime slipped his hand under her shirt and she shivered at the touch of his cold fingers. “Don't talk about Bronn when I'm trying to seduce you.” 

“I thought I was trying to seduce _you_?” she said, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him softly. He nipped at her bottom lip, the soft green of his eyes turning bright with desire. 

“Either way will do.” 

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Hold on, I forgot something,” she said over his frustrated groan. He sucked one finger into the wet heat of his mouth and Brienne struggled to focus. His tongue was obscene. “Wait, this is important.” 

“Mm.” 

“Something about--” Jaime's palm skimmed up her shirt and cupped her breast, his stump rubbing circles along her back. She was purposefully not wearing a bra and he made a pleased noise in his throat at the discovery. 

“You _are_ trying to seduce me,” he said around her finger. 

She pulled her hand back and replaced her finger with her tongue; she imagined the slick slide of his all over her body and her thighs clenched. 

Jaime retreated a little and gave her a falsely innocent look. “What were you going to say?” 

“Who cares,” she said, dragging him down, laughing, onto the bed with her. 

Later, when they were lying naked in each other's arms, watching the sun struggling to peek through the thinning clouds, Brienne kissed his chest and said, “Melisandre called this morning. She wants to do a year-long documentary on us for her network.” 

“Like last year?”

“No, this is just about us, not everybody. And it's all the stuff outside of the racing, kind of a 'Year In The Life Of' situation.”

Jaime trailed his fingers down her arm, a slow, soothing caress. “Sounds invasive.” 

“It could be, but we could use it to promote the karting school. We'd set very firm limits, too, and you know she'll honor them.”

“What does Pia think?” 

“That it's good publicity and she wants Peck to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes piece out of it.” Jaime's chest rumbled under her with his low laughter. 

“Always working the angle, those two.”

“They've earned it, after what they did for us.” 

He craned his head a little to look down at her where she was nestled into the curve of his shoulder. “You want to do it?”

“I do. I think it'll be good to show people what the rest of it is like, and maybe it will drive more interest for other women. Show them what's possible.” 

“You do that already. Your chief engineer is a woman, you're mentoring someone who's sure to be the next woman driver in F1. You're the World Champion. You don't have to take on more.” 

“I know. But now that I _have_ won a world championship, people are listening in ways they didn't before. It feels right.” 

“Then let's do it.” He kissed the top of her head. “But no cameras in here. This is just for us.” 

“Deal.” She'd already decided that herself, and was happy – but not surprised – they were in agreement there. 

“Since we're talking about calls – I spoke to Tyrion on the way home. He's got all the contracts ready to go, and he'll be there on Monday. He sends you his love.” 

“Does he?” she said, smiling a little. “That's nice.” 

“Our father is still trying to fight, but he's completely toothless now.” 

“Good. Then don't give him another thought,” she said fiercely into Jaime's skin. His arms tightened around her. Jaime had spent a lot of time talking about his father with Samwell, and he'd come a long way since the finale in King's Landing. But she suspected parents always had the possibility to hurt their children, no matter how impervious they thought they were. Even Tywin himself had been driven by it in the end. At least Jaime would use his own tender scars to be a wonderful father. 

While they waited for a better time to have children of their own, Jaime was using that instinct now to connect with the kids at the karting school, especially those with disabilities. Brienne loved watching him and Selwyn on their free weekends, patiently teaching everything they knew while Elenda calmed the often-nervous parents and Brienne inevitably got roped into challenges by the bigger girls and boys. 

Selwyn and Elenda had eagerly embraced the karting school idea, and jumped in to oversee it during the racing season. When the pair had gotten married last summer, they'd had their reception at the school, and there had been children and families all over the grounds to celebrate with them. The team had been there, too, even Sandor, who'd been a figure of great interest to all the curious little eyes. If Shireen hadn't been there to distract him, Brienne honestly wasn't sure if he even would have gone, but she seemed able to work miracles on Sandor sometimes. A fact which Brienne teased him with during their occasional bar nights. 

Jaime and Brienne lay together quietly, until her phone buzzed with a message. She stretched over top of Jaime and grabbed it while he kissed the curve of her shoulder. When she saw who it was, she smiled. 

“It's Dacey,” Brienne said, setting the phone aside again. “She and Addam are settled in their new place, they'll both be at the offices on Monday, too.” 

“Has he asked her yet?”

“Of course he hasn't,” she said. “She's definitely gonna ask him first.” 

“I can't wait to rub it in that he was a bigger chicken than I was.” 

Brienne poked her finger into Jaime's stomach and he snickered. “Don't forget I was the one who asked you to move in.”

“Well, I kissed you first.” 

“Did you?” she said, feigning forgetfulness. “I'm pretty sure that was me.” 

“Wrench,” he warned her, his fingers lightly feathering her ribs. “Do you need a re-enactment? Because we could start from the top. I could go for some chowder again tonight.” 

“We're gonna need Arryk to open a chowder house in King's Landing just for you.” 

Jaime's hand stilled. “Do you think he would?” he asked hopefully. 

She smiled and scooted up to kiss him, and then kiss him again, and again, as he melted into her. “No,” she whispered, “but I'll make it up to you.” 

Jaime rubbed the pad of his thumb over the scar on her cheek. It was paled now, and well-loved. Jaime liked to trace it with his lips and fingers the same way she traced his, each of them tender with each other's scars, both of them seeing each other completely and holding them closer because of it. “It makes you look fierce,” he told her sometimes with a smile and sometimes when he was urgent with need; other nights, when he treated her like she was delicate and soft, he said, “It reminds me of everything you'd do for the people you love” in a voice round with awe. 

Now, Jaime was watching her with the endless well of adoration that was mirrored by her own for him. Brienne smiled softly and brushed her fingers through his hair. The first few hints of gray had started to appear, and she was looking forward to seeing more of it come in, to grow old with him at her side. The years ahead would be busy. They didn't have to worry about Tywin anymore, but life was naturally as full of turns and straights as the best track. She knew how hard it was to travel it alone, and the certainty that she would never have to filled her with a joyful contentment so complete she felt unstoppable. 

Outside, the waves crashed along the rock-strewn shore; in King's Landing, preparations were already underway on her new car. There were interviews and arguments and races ahead. At some point they'd have a child or two, which meant a whole new set of challenges and treasured moments. Time would move on, and life with it. 

As though he could read her thoughts, Jaime asked, “Are you ready for this?” Giving her the smile that was only hers. She gave him the one that was his own. 

“Yes,” Brienne said. “I've got you, don't I?”

He linked their fingers, tucking their hands between their chests. “Forever,” he promised. 

“Forever,” she promised him in return. They kissed, lingering and sweet, their hearts beating loudly together. 

Forever might just be long enough.

\- The End - 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm ending this how I began: with an absurdly long author's note. :D
> 
> About four months ago, I started writing this last author's note with what I thought I was going to want to say here at the end of the story. At the time I was still so deep in the middle of the worry and the work that all I could think about was how relieved I was going to be to be done with it. 
> 
> I have since scrapped that author's note, because now that I'm here, I'm actually sad to see this story go. Relieved, too, of course. Thrilled and SO grateful that you all have enjoyed the story and the ending (and hopefully this epilogue, hee). But I've lived with this story and these characters in my head every day for almost a year, and I realized as I sat down to write this: _I'm going to miss them._
> 
> Writers (Humans, I suppose) are weird. We complain and freak out and whine nonstop through something, and then get to the other side and we're grateful for the experience. That's how I feel right now. Especially since writing this fic has introduced me to so many fantastic people I now call friends. 
> 
> I'm grateful for every single comment – all of which I read several times, many of which I read an embarrassing number of times. Some of you have been commenting on every chapter for a long time – some since the beginning even, and I appreciate that more than I can say. But honestly even a single emoji string was enough to keep me going some days. So if you're ever wondering “should I leave just this short comment?” on a fic, the answer is yes. Sometimes that short comment comes in in the middle of the week when everything sucks and seeing it arrive is a boost. 
> 
> I really want to give special shout-outs to certain folks but I have a deep-seated terror of forgetting somebody important, so please just know that if you feel like we connected when our paths crossed here, I feel that way, too, I _promise_ you. <333 Although I do have to give one particular shoutout to jencat, who has been an incredible delight to talk F1 and feral speed babies and Drive To Survive Westeros and Baldo Norris and Carlos' doe eyes and parkour Dan and so many other things with, and who has helped make the pandemic-related racing hiatus not just bearable but FUN. She was also the recipient of a few of my most emotionally frazzled pre-chapter posting moments and inspiration for certain fic shenanigans, and I'm also thankful for that.
> 
> This is almost assuredly (please, gods) the longest story I will ever write (longer even than ACoK) and the amount of support you all have given me here and on tumblr and discord and via DMs has been genuinely irreplaceable. It took an entire village to get me through this. Frankly, it took several villages to get me through this. Just ask the folks I had a very panicked near-breakdown discussion with on discord a couple of weeks ago (y'all helped _so much_; I really did screencap those comments). Thank you thank you _thank you_. 
> 
> It would be a travesty to not thank BrynnMcK one last time, too. When I started writing this, she had just started getting into the fandom, and her joining was good not just for the fandom at large thanks to her excellent stories and warm-hearted disposition, but especially for me, because my life is always better when she's involved AND ALSO this story is LIGHT YEARS better because she was involved. Brynn not only read every section of this fic (several of them MANY times) and provided clear-headed grammatical edits as well as perfect emotional arc guidance, but she ALSO was my enthusiastic sounding board, my safe place to complain, and my heartfelt supporter every step of the way. I absolutely could not have finished this story without her; I would have petered out ten chapters in and never gone back. Seriously – ask her how many times I made her read just the last few paragraphs of the epilogue. Truly a saint. If you enjoyed this fic, she deserves credit for that, too. She is a VIKING and one of the most genuinely thoughtful and kind people I've ever met and I'm lucky she's in my life. Brynn: thank you and I love you and I owe you that whiskey tour we talked about once when we can be nearer than six feet to each other again. <3 
> 
> As for me, I'm gonna keep writing. I have a lot of stories left I want to tell. If you want to reach me, I always read comments here and my Ask Box and DMs on tumblr are always open: ajoblotofjunk.tumblr.com. Stop by any time! As you can imagine, I'll never tire of talking about this story, so if you have questions or things you want to know more about (I couldn't hit nearly everyone I wanted to in the epilogue in a reasonable manner, but I know what happened to them) or a scene I might have glossed over or skipped that you'd like to see written, I'd love to answer! 
> 
> I'm so glad I got to share this whole experience with such a marvelous group of people as you. 
> 
> A million times: thank you.


End file.
